cunning

Plural: cunnings

Noun

• Skill in deception; cleverness and craftiness.
• shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception
• crafty artfulness (especially in deception)
• Practical knowledge or experience; aptitude in performance; skill, proficiency; dexterity.
• Practical skill employed in a secret or crafty manner; craft; artifice; skillful deceit; art or magic.
• The disposition to employ one's skill in an artful manner; craftiness; guile; artifice; skill of being cunning, sly, conniving, or deceitful.
• The natural wit or instincts of an animal.
• Knowledge; learning; special knowledge (sometimes implying occult or magical knowledge).

Adjective Satellite

• attractive especially by means of smallness or prettiness or quaintness
  • "cunning kittens"
  • "a cunning baby"
• marked by skill in deception
  • "cunning men often pass for wise"
• showing inventiveness and skill
  • "the cunning maneuvers leading to his success"

Adj

• Sly; crafty; clever in surreptitious behaviour.
• Skillful, artful.
• Wrought with, or exhibiting, skill or ingenuity; ingenious.
• Cute, appealing.

Adjective

• Having or showing skill in achieving ends by deceit.

Examples

• cunning work
• Her CUNNING move involved blocking my potential bingo with a low-scoring word.
• It takes great CUNNING to trap an opponent into opening a double-word score.
• the cunning of the fox or hare

Synonyms

clever, craft, craftiness, crafty, cute, dodgy, foxiness, foxy, guile, guileful, ingenious, knavish, slick, sly, slyness, tricksy, tricky, wiliness, wily, abet, art, artful, astute, beguilement, cautelous, cunning, dodge, foxlike, foxship, frood, list, shrewd, slim, subtle, subtlety, vulpine, wile

Antonyms

artlessness, bluntness, candor, honesty, innocence, naïveté, simplicity, veracity

Related Words

wily

Anagrams of cunning