cunning

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Marked by or given to artful subtlety and deceptiveness.
2. adj. Executed with or exhibiting ingenuity.
3. adj. Delicately pleasing; pretty or cute: a cunning pet.
4. n. Skill in deception; guile.
5. n. Skill or adeptness in execution or performance; dexterity.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Knowledge; learning; special knowledge: sometimes implying occult or magical knowledge.
2. n. Practical knowledge or experience; skill; dexterity.
3. n. Practical skill employed in a secret or crafty manner; craft; artifice; skilful deceit.
4. n. Disposition to employ one's skill in an artful manner; craftiness; guile; artifice.
5. n. The natural wit or instincts of an animal: as, the cunning of the fox or hare. Synonyms and Craft, craftiness, shrewdness, subtlety, finesse, duplicity, intrigue, guile.
6. Knowing; having knowledge; learned; having or concerned with special or strange knowledge, and hence sometimes with an implication of magical or supernatural knowledge. See cunning-man, cunning-woman.
7. Having knowledge acquired by experience or practice; having technical knowledge and manual skill; skilful; dexterous.
8. Exhibiting or wrought with ingenuity; skilful; curious; ingenious.
9. Characterized by or exercising crafty ingenuity; artfully subtle or shrewd; knowing in guile; guileful; tricky.
10. Marked by crafty ingenuity; showing shrewdness or guile; expressive of subtlety: as, a cunning deception; cunning looks.
11. Curiously or quaintly attractive; subtly interesting; piquant: commonly used of something small or young: as, the cunning ways of a child or a pet animal.
12. Synonyms Cunning, Artful, Sly, Subtle, Shrewd, Tricky, Adroit, Wily, Crafty, Intriguing, sharp, foxy. All these words suggest something underhand or deceptive. Cunning, literally knowing, and especially knowing how, now implies a disposition to compass one's ends by concealment; hence we speak of a fox-like cunning. Artful indicates greater ingenuity and ability, the latter, however, being of a low kind. Sly is the same as cunning, except that it is more vulgar and implies less ability. (“A col-fox, ful of sleigh iniquité.” Chaucer, Nun's Priest's Tale, l. 395.) (“Envy works in a sly, imperceptible manner.” Watts.) Subtle implies concealment, like cunning, but also a marked ability and the power to work out one's plans without being suspected; hence, while cunning is applicable to brutes, subtle is too high a word for that, except by figurative use. The rabbit is cunning enough to hide from the dog; Mephistopheles is subtle. (For the favorable meanings of subtle, see astute. For the good senses of shrewd, see acute.) In its unfavorable aspects shrewd implies a penetration and judgment that are somewhat narrow and worldly-wise, too much so to deserve the name of sagacity or wisdom. (See astute.) Tricky is especially a word of action; it expresses the character and conduct of one who gets the confidence of others only to abuse it by acts of selfishness, especially cheating. Adroit, in a bad sense, expresses a ready and skilful use of trickery, or facility in performing and escaping detection of reprehensihle acts. (See adroit.) Wily is appropriate where a person is viewed as an opponent in real or figurative warfare, against whom wiles or stratagems are employed: a wily adversary is one who is full of such devices; a wily politician is one who is notably given to advancing party interests by leading the opposite side to commit blunders, etc. A crafty man has less ability than a subtle man, and works more by deception or knavery than the shrewd man; he is more active than the cunning man, and more steadily active than the sly man; he is on the moral level of the trickish man. Intriguing is applied where the plots are secret arrangements made with others, perhaps against a third party, and especially of a complicated character.
13. n. A variant of cony.
14. n. The river-lamprey.

Wiktionary

1. n. obsolete Knowledge; learning; special knowledge (sometimes implying occult or magical knowledge).
2. n. Practical knowledge or experience; aptitude in performance; skill, proficiency; dexterity.
3. n. Practical skill employed in a secret or crafty manner; craft; artifice; skillful deceit.
4. n. The disposition to employ one's skill in an artful manner; craftiness; guile; artifice; skill of being cunning, sly, conniving, or deceitful.
5. n. The natural wit or instincts of an animal.
6. adj. Sly; crafty; clever in surreptitious behaviour.
7. adj. Skillful, artful.
8. adj. rare Cute, appealing.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Knowing; skillful; dexterous.
2. adj. Wrought with, or exhibiting, skill or ingenuity; ingenious; curious.
3. adj. Crafty; sly; artful; designing; deceitful.
4. adj. Colloq. U.S. Pretty or pleasing.
5. n. Archaic Knowledge; art; skill; dexterity.
6. n. The faculty or act of using stratagem to accomplish a purpose; fraudulent skill or dexterity; deceit; craft.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. crafty artfulness (especially in deception)
2. n. shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception
3. adj. attractive especially by means of smallness or prettiness or quaintness
4. adj. marked by skill in deception
5. adj. showing inventiveness and skill