Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Clever or cunning, especially in the practice of deceit.
- adj. Stealthy or surreptitious: took a sly look at the letter on the table.
- adj. Playfully mischievous: a sly laugh.
- idiom. on the sly In a way intended to escape notice: took extra payments on the sly.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- . Cunning; skilful; shrewd.
- Meanly artful; insidious; crafty.
- Playfully artful; knowing; having an intentionally transparent artfulness.
- Artfully and delicately wrought; cunning; ingenious.
- Thin; fine; slight; slender.
- Illicit: as, sly grog (liquor made in illicit stills).
- Synonyms and
- Cunning, Artful, Sly, etc. (sec cunning).
- Roguish, playful, waggish.
Wiktionary
- adj. Artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily.
- adj. Dexterous in performing an action, so as to escape notice; nimble; skillful; cautious; shrewd; knowing; — in a good sense.
- adj. Done with, and marked by, artful and dexterous secrecy; subtle; as, a sly trick.
- adj. Light or delicate; slight; thin.
- adv. Slyly.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Dexterous in performing an action, so as to escape notice; nimble; skillful; cautious; shrewd; knowing; -- in a good sense.
- adj. Artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily.
- adj. Done with, and marked by, artful and dexterous secrecy; subtle.
- adj. obsolete Light or delicate; slight; thin.
- adv. Obs. or Poetic Slyly.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. marked by skill in deception
Etymologies
- From Middle English sly, sley, from Old Norse slǣgr, slœgr ("sly, cunning", literally "capable of hitting or striking"), from Proto-Germanic *slōgiz (“lively, agile, cunning, sly, striking”), from Proto-Indo-European *slak- (“to hit, throw”). Cognate with Icelandic slægur ("crafty, sly"), Norwegian Nynorsk sløg ("sly"), German schlau ("clever, crafty"). Related to sleight, slay. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English sleigh, from Old Norse slœgr. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Wes Anderson animated a classic Roald Dahl story and cast the vocal talents of George Clooney as the title sly fox.”
“I also would like to write in my vote for Bruce Campbell to be in this movie. joe story sounds decent. but i don't know how good the script will be if sly is writing it. the cast sounds good, but i don't know how well jet li will fit into a more traditional action movie rather than a kung fu movie.”
Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Jet Li to Team Up For The Expendables | /Film
“She held her expression sly and walked Runtly away.”
“In fact, all along she has been impressing on me in sly terms, that my absence was felt to be good company at Cheyne Row; and that if I ever came back it would be at the risk of spoiling everybody's good humour!!”
“One day he called sly Mercury, who had wings on his shoes, and bade him go and lead the cow away from the grove where she was kept.”
“Im disappointed in vh1s top songs. they are just getting more out of key with veiwers by adding fillers like creed and korn. i would rather call sly and family stone more popular "hard rock" evanesance.”
““The fear of camera-fitted mobile phones which can take pictures of a woman on the sly, is keeping a number of Qatari women away from beauty salons,” the Peninsula On-line reports.””
Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Qatari women and camera-fitted mobile phones
“He rebuilds a lab, on the sly, that is humongous, an undertaking requiring great wealth and a greater amount of equipment and manpower.”
“A minute later it was Mosselet’s turn to come in, a cigarette between his lips, his expression sly and condescending.”
“Sawney's warning against doing things on the sly was a clever way of teaching a more fundamental principle: be honest, be truthful.”
Charles Alexander: Global Warming: a Test for the Next Greatest Generation
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sly’.
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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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3-Letter Scrabble Words Which Do Not ...
A list of 3-letter words which cannot be formed by adding a letter to a 2-letter word (see Ken Clark's word lists found at http://www.seattlescrab...
ace, act, aff, aft, apo, app, apt, auk, ava, ave, avo, azo and 225 more...
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bad memory
copper, anvil, oblique, thrust, shrine, welfare, farewell, bitter, faction, sectarian, tangible, spectacle and 134 more...
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Common English Words That Are Also Fi...
art, bob, bill, grace, hope, john, heather, pat, amber, jack, dale, glen and 170 more...
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3-letter Scrabble Words
aah, aal, aas, aba, abo, abs, aby, ace, act, add, ado, ads and 995 more...
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3 Letter Words
A list of English words that are three letters long.
ace, act, ade, ado, add, ads, age, ago, ail, air, aim, all and 397 more...
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Words that look like adverbs but aren't
manly, womanly, ungainly, slovenly, homily, costly, dastardly, family, sparkly, wrinkly, oily, orderly and 69 more...
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Viking Words
From http://www.vikingrune.com/2009/10/viking-words-in-english/
anger, birth, bleak, bloom, call, cast, crawl, crook, die, fellow, gear, get and 36 more...
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intueri's Words
inveigle, dolorous, archly, feckless, resplendent, concatenation, peripatetic, delightful, cookie, fey, ephemeral, effervescent and 347 more...
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Shadowkeir's list
This list, the one shown below this very message, is a collection of words that you cannot begin to fathom how much I adore. The list will also feature atithesis and contrasting words such as the t...
wishful, anticlimactic, forte, monchromatic, septic, wonderous, isoclinal, deformed, disintergrate, favourite, laughable, awe-inspiring and 250 more...
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What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
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Neww
specious, disdainfully, vehemently, in lieu of, dismissive, perpetual, preposterous, impasse, fathom, conversely, repugnant, clogged and 142 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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What Do You Mean $
ahh these hurt.....
hermit, prone, maxim, guise, solvenly, lurid, lax, amiable, irate, cloister, mediate, nettle and 100 more...
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Tunie: Word Disassociation
(I'm fairly sure that I'm subverting the whole concept of the Tunie by listing this song. Subversion! Yes! HA HA HA HA! Mine is an evil laugh!!!)
Word Disassociation
antidisestablishm..., quickly, ruby, bionic, about, crouch, a cappella, imposter, flames, distraction, murderous, over and 181 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sly.
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