Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The art or practice of riding horses, especially in races.
  • noun A quasi-honorary title given in jest or banter.
  • noun The practice of deceiving in horse-dealing; hence, in trade, trickery; sharp practice.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The art, character, or position, of a jockey; the personality of a jockey.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The art, character, or position, of a jockey; the personality of a jockey.
  • noun Where can at last his jockeyship retire? — Cowper.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

jockey +‎ -ship

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Examples

  • Both my parents were secretly vexed that I had come into the world an hour sooner than my brother; and Gerald himself looked upon it as a sort of juggle, -- a kind of jockeyship by which he had lost the prerogative of birthright.

    Devereux — Volume 01 Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838

  • Both my parents were secretly vexed that I had come into the world an hour sooner than my brother; and Gerald himself looked upon it as a sort of juggle, -- a kind of jockeyship by which he had lost the prerogative of birthright.

    Devereux — Complete Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838

  • "Curius quid sentit, et ambo Scipiadæ? --" have said to the subserviency of their present misrepresentatives, who go forth, not to give races, but to witness the feats of barbarian jockeyship, on a turf that once resounded only to the hoofs of their own favourite racers.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 Various

  • On the other side there was Sir R Fagg, of Sussex, of whom fame says he has the most in him and the least to show for it (relating to jockeyship) of any man there, yet he often carried the prize.

    Tour through Eastern Counties of England, 1722 Daniel Defoe 1696

  • A degree of jockeyship, however, is required for this service, for a Canadian voyageur is as full of latent tricks and vice as a horse; and when he makes the greatest external promise, is prone to prove the greatest external promise, is prone to prove the greatest "take in."

    Astoria, or, anecdotes of an enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains Washington Irving 1821

  • But the race is not always to the swift; honest art and noble jockeyship have interposed; Firetail has been distanced, Blacklegs fallen lame, and Potatooooooo run the wrong side of the post: — then comes a reckoning, a dreadful reckoning; empty pocket-books, — bankers accounts, — exhausted credit, — bets to be be paid the moment of arrival in town.

    Francis, the Philanthropist: an unfashionable tale 1786

  • Understand, my good friend, that the author is very ill-calculated for bookseller's and printer's jockeyship; which, to a liberal mind fraught with high and generous ideas, is death and the devil.

    Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African. In Two Volumes. To Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of His Life, Vol. 2 1778

  • Minerva in the shape of Count Bernsdorff, or out of all shape in the person of the Duchess of Northumberland, is to conduct Telemachus to York races; for can a monarch be perfectly accomplished in the mysteries of king-craft, as our Solomon James I. called it, unless he is initiated in the arts of jockeyship?

    The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 3 Horace Walpole 1757

  • It is a vulgar error -- an abuse of terms -- the mere jargon of jockeyship, to say that the horse needs suppling to perform this, or any other air of the manége, or anything else that man can make him do; all that he wants is to be made acquainted with the wishes of his rider, and inspired with the desire to execute them.

    Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding George Greenwood 1837

  • So perfect was his jockeyship, so clever his management of the animal he mounted, so intimately acquainted was he with every cross-road in the neighborhood of the metropolis -- a book of which he constructed, and carried constantly about his person --, as well as with many other parts of England, particularly the counties of Chester, York, and Lancaster, that he outstripped every pursuer, and baffled all attempts at capture.

    Rookwood William Harrison Ainsworth 1843

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