Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Treacherous cunning; skillful deceit.
- n. Obsolete A trick or stratagem.
- v. Archaic To beguile; deceive.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Disposition to deceive or cheat; insidious artifice; craft; cunning.
- n. A trick; a wile.
- n. Synonyms Artfulness, subtlety, deception, trickery.
- To deceive; beguile.
- To disguise cunningly.
- n. The fermented wort used by vinegar-makers.
- n. A brewers' vat; a guilfat.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable astuteness often marked by a certain sense of cunning or artful deception.
- n. deceptiveness, deceit, fraud, duplicity, dishonesty
- v. to deceive, to beguile
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Craft; deceitful cunning; artifice; duplicity; wile; deceit; treachery.
- v. obsolete To disguise or conceal; to deceive or delude.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them)
- n. shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception
- n. the quality of being crafty
Etymologies
- From Middle English gile, from Anglo-Norman gile, from Old French guile ("deception"), from Frankish *wigila ("ruse"). Cognate via Proto-Germanic with wile. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, of Germanic origin; akin to Old English wigle, divination, sorcery. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Without his intending to, for he is a man wholly lacking in guile, Paul becomes a human, very vulnerable wedge between the two women, testing their love to the limits.”
“They have inherited their guile from the Dodo side of the family.”
“Stained freshly? have your hearts in guile grown old?”
“He seems totally lacking in guile, and so genuine in his liberalism that one almost suspects him, as somebody said long ago of the British Labour party, of allowing his bleeding heart to go to his bloody head.”
“With great simplicity and godly sincerity: Our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile, v. 3.”
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation)
“3 For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile: 4”
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation)
“The man was totally without guile, which is why he was so refreshing to a Machiavellian schemer like Halcon.”
“Time was ineffably precious -- there was every reason to suspect Yankee guile, which is said to be nowhere more fertilely exhibited than in their conduct of the blockade; but it was deemed possible, after careful scrutiny, that the vessel might be on fire.”
Running the Blockade into the Port of Wilmington, North Carolina
“If it should be objected by any that though he did not himself burden them, yet, being crafty, he caught them with guile, that is, he sent those among them who pillaged them, and afterwards he shared with them in the profit: "This was not so," says the apostle; "I did not make a gain of you myself, nor by any of those whom I sent; nor did Titus, nor any others -- We walked by the same spirit and in the same steps.”
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation)
“I spent the week getting sore throats after my long teaching days never talk for 8 hours straight and making Gollum noises as a mnemonic device to help kids remember the word "guile".”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘guile’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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501
Classic
irk, teem, blight, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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common UA vocab. in US
Interesting, there is a traditional vocabulary of an Ukrainian, that differs from vocabulary of average American. It would be nice to explore it.
jackdaw, incongruous, cassock, vivid, magpie, humdrum, amongst, wonder, wandering, wheedling, wheedle, osseous and 368 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2053 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 569 more...
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No, thank you
Words with negative connotations
fetid, furtive, guile, chicanery, prevaricate, prodigal, meretricious, myopic, noisome, nominal, perfidious, perfunctory and 2 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1901 more...
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to memorize
words i need to memorize
aberrant, abscond, advocate, aggrandize, amalgamate, ambiguous, ambrosial, anomalous, antediluvian, antipathy, arbitrate, assuage and 163 more...
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Advanced Words: Part II
facetious, felicitous, grandiloquent, germane, repatriate, exigency, exculpate, etheral, fatuous, heterogeneous, hiatus, idiosyncrasy and 118 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
Tweets
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