Definition of "tricksy"

My trickſey Spirit.

1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene i], page 18

There will succeed, therefore, in my opinion, and that too within no long time, to the rudeness and rusticity of our age, that ensnaring meretricious popularness in literature, with all the tricksy humilities of the ambitious candidates for the favourable suffrages of the judicious public, which if we do not take good care will break up and scatter before it all robustness and manly vigour of intellect, all masculine fortitude of virtue.

1809, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend

A green light was flickering in his bulging eyes. ‘Masster, masster!’ he hissed. ‘Wicked! Tricksy! False!’ He spat and stretched out his long arms with white snapping fingers.

1954, J. R. R. Tolkien, chapter 6, in The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings), Book 4

As an experienced editor I disapprove of backflashes, foreshadowings and tricksy devices […]

2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, London: Hodder and Stoughton

The second section of the novel consists of “The Golden Vanity”, the New Yorker short story that prompted the narrator’s substantial advance, and which transposes names and details of the story and characters introduced in part one. This may seem tricksy in a way we’ve seen many times before.

2015 January 14, Catherine O'Flynn, “10:04 by Ben Lerner review”, in The Guardian‎