Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
Indian rope trick en · NOUN
Meanings
-
A magic trick said to have been performed in and around India during the 19th century, involving the climbing of a rope that appears to rise unsupported into the air.
I asked him if he thought they had any occult or medicinal way of prolonging life or preserving youth, and he said they were supposed to have a great deal of very curious knowledge about such things, but he suspected that if you came to look into it, it was rather like the Indian rope trick - always something that somebody else had seen.
1933, James Hilton, Lost Horizon, published 1973, page 180:
Forms
Synonyms
rope trick