Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Cunning   /kˈənɪŋ/   Listen
adjective
Cunning  adj.  
1.
Knowing; skillful; dexterous. "A cunning workman." ""Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on." "Esau was a cunning hunter."
2.
Wrought with, or exhibiting, skill or ingenuity; ingenious; curious; as, cunning work. "Over them Arachne high did lift" "Her cunning web."
3.
Crafty; sly; artful; designing; deceitful. "They are resolved to be cunning; let others run the hazard of being sincere."
4.
Pretty or pleasing; as, a cunning little boy. (Colloq. U.S.)
Synonyms: Cunning, Artful, Sly, Wily, Crafty. These epithets agree in expressing an aptitude for attaining some end by peculiar and secret means. Cunning is usually low; as, a cunning trick. Artful is more ingenious and inventive; as, an artful device. Sly implies a turn for what is double or concealed; as, sly humor; a sly evasion. Crafty denotes a talent for dexterously deceiving; as, a crafty manager. Wily describes a talent for the use of stratagems; as, a wily politician. A cunning man often shows his dexterity in simply concealing. An artful man goes further, and exerts his ingenuity in misleading. A crafty man mingles cunning with art, and so shapes his actions as to lull suspicions. The young may be cunning, but the experienced only can be crafty. Slyness is a vulgar kind of cunning; the sly man goes cautiously and silently to work. Wiliness is a species of cunning or craft applicable only to cases of attack and defense."


noun
Cunning  n.  
1.
Knowledge; art; skill; dexterity. (Archaic) "Let my right hand forget her cunning." "A carpenter's desert Stands more in cunning than in power."
2.
The faculty or act of using stratagem to accomplish a purpose; fraudulent skill or dexterity; deceit; craft. "Discourage cunning in a child; cunning is the ape of wisdom." "We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |




"Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books



... ways: it paralyzes, and it renders cunning. At this moment I found it inspire me. I made my plans before I started, how to steal along under the cover of the blighted brushwood which broke the line of the valley here and there. I set out only after long thought, seizing the moment when the vaguely perceived ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... and cunning. While Alberich boasted, he was planning how he might trick the dwarf and ...
— Opera Stories from Wagner • Florence Akin
... gracious," said my Aunt Bridget, "who would have imagined you didn't know. I thought every girl in the world knew before she put up her hair and came out of short frocks. My Betsy did, I'm sure of that. And to think that you—you whom we thought so cute, so cunning. . . . Mary O'Neill, I'm ashamed of you. I really, really am! Why, you goose" (Aunt Bridget was again trying to laugh), "how did you suppose the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... vanity) that he was not considerable enough in my eyes to make me take over-ready offence at what he said, or at his haughty looks: in other words, that I had not value enough for him to treat him with peculiarity either by smiles or frowns. Indeed he had cunning enough to give me, undesignedly, a piece of instruction which taught me this caution; for he had said in conversation once, 'That if a man could not make a woman in courtship own herself pleased with him, it was as much and oftentimes more to his purpose ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... questions are, all of them, perfectly simple, and primarily vital. Determine these, and you have at once a basis for national conduct in all important particulars. Leave them undetermined, and there is no limit to the distress which may be brought upon the people by the cunning of its knaves, and the folly ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin


More quotes...


Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com