Word Finder - cunning

definition

Sly; crafty; clever in surreptitious behaviour.

definition

Skillful, artful.

definition

Wrought with, or exhibiting, skill or ingenuity; ingenious.

example

cunning work

definition

Cute, appealing.

example

a cunning little boy

In this world one has to be cunning and cruel.

He gave a cunning smile as she tensed.

They'd been cunning by bringing Claire here to distract him.

Men have told me that there is no riddle so cunning that you can not solve it.

They are good hunters who are wonderfully cunning and enduring.

His smile was cunning, the glow of lust in his eyes.

A cunning smile crossed his face.

The cunning of the Normans is plain enough; so is their impatience of restraint, unless held down by a strong master.

They are of middle height and dark complexion, with generally straight nose, small round skull, small sharp chin and large full eyes, which are expressive, however, rather of cunning than intelligence.

He substituted cunning and corruption for violence.

The cunning and stratagem of the fox have been proverbial for many ages, and he has figured as a central character in fables from the earliest times, as in Aesop, down to "Uncle Remus," most notably as Reynard (Raginohardus, strong in counsel) in the great medieval beast-epic "Reynard the Fox" (q.v.).

With a madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman, raised his pistol, and took aim.

She had got to know the heart of the peasant - his superstitions, his suspiciousness and low cunning, no less than his shrewdness, his sturdy independence and his strong domestic attachments.

The second part of the story concerns VOlundr, lord of the elves, the cunning smith, who, after learning his art from Mime, then from the dwarfs, came to the court of King NIN19r, and there defeated in fight the smith Amilias.

A naughty Surf Patrol costume, which even comes with a cunning rope.

Darkyn's smile was cunning.

Powers of reasoning are not denied to animals nor even speech; the silence of the brute creation may be put down to their superior cunning.

Heracles, whom Zeus had originally intended to be ruler of Argos, Lacedaemon and Messenian Pylos, had been supplanted by the cunning of Hera, and his intended possessions had fallen into the hands of Eurystheus, king of Mycenae.

This person had much ability and no little cunning.

But as the Maccabees had now in the name of the Syrians cleared the Syrians out of Palestine, Tryphon's jealousy was aroused, and he resolved to be rid of Jonathan, who, with all his cunning, walked into a trap at Ptolemais, was made prisoner and ultimately slain (143).

He gives fullest scope to the ungenerous view that a vast proportion of professedly revealed truth was ingeniously palmed off by the more cunning on the more ignorant for the convenience of keeping the latter under.

She was supreme in magical power, cunning and knowledge.

He soon became a very cunning person with a cut throat business mind.

But the landlady had the pertinacity and also the cunning of her sex.

Any actual confrontation must be approached with the utmost of care & cunning.

His slow, cunning smile was not what she wanted to see.

You got it, he said, his look turning cunning.

Yet both Bethlen and Rakoczy owed far more to favourable circumstances than to their own cunning.

The savage attributes to animals the same ideas, the same mental processes as himself, and at the same time vastly greater power and cunning.

Thus the cunning of Elizabeth and Cecil had its reward.

Gaiseric was a cruel and cunning man, possessing great military talents and superior mental gifts.

Goethe's dramas, on the other hand, have not, in the eyes of his nation, succeeded in holding their own beside Schiller's; but the reason is rather because Goethe, from what might be called a wilful obstinacy, refused to be bound by the conventions of the theatre, than because he was deficient in the cunning of the dramatist.

His eyes were keen and piercing, but a long hooked nose lent grotesqueness to a face marked with cunning rather than with dignity.

Whereas everything, perhaps, has some share of indwelling potency, whatever is sacred manifests this potency in an extraordinary degree, as typically the wonder-working leader of society, whose mana consists in his cunning and luck together.

We hear from Adam of Bremen that Anund was young in years but old in wisdom and cunning; he was called Kolbrannea because he had the houses of evildoers burnt.

It was assumed by deists in debating against the orthodox, that the flood of error in the hostile camp was due to the benevolent cunning or deliberate self-seeking of unscrupulous men, supported by the ignorant with the obstinacy of prejudice.

In India these animals are hunted with foxhounds or greyhounds, and from their cunning and pluck afford excellent sport.

But in the great Sala dell' Asse (or della Torre) abundant traces of Leonardo's own hand were found, in the shape of a decoration of intricate geometrical knot or plait work .combined with natural leafage; the abstract puzzle-pattern, of a kind in which Leonardo took peculiar pleasure, intermingling in cunning play and contrast with a pattern of living boughs and leaves exquisitely drawn in free and vital growth.

To put an end to the perpetual civil strife the Paduans elected him their lord, and he seems to have governed well, leaving the city at his death (1324) to his nephew Marsiglio, a man famed for his cunning.

But he was cunning, strong-handed and energetic; clearly the Red King would be an undesirable master to those who loved feudal anarchy.

But he fought through his troubles, conquered Cumberland from the Scots (1092), in dealing with his domestic enemies used cunning where force failed, and generally got his will in the end.

Though cunning, he was destitute alike of foresight and of self-control; he could never discern the way in which his conduct would be judged by other men, because he lacked even the rudiments of a conscience.

It proved impossible to carry out the scheme; the laborers were too many and too cunning to be crushed.

From 1409 onward he ceased to be a public danger to the realm, yet so great was his cunning and activity that he was never caught, and died still maintaining a hopeless rebellion so late as 1416.

Yet, however far he might go on the road to tyranny, Henry had sufficient cunning, versatility and power of cool reflection, to know precisely when he had reached the edge of the impossible.

But Henrys doubts had been marvellously stimulated by the fact that he had become enamoured of another ladythe beautiful, ambitious and cunning Anne Boleyn, a niece of the duke of Norfolk, who had no intention of becoming merely the kings mistress, but aspired to be his consort.

Its hero Nial, type of the good lawyer, is contrasted with its villain Mord, the ensample of cunning, chicane, and legal wrong doing; and a great part of the saga is taken up with the three cases and suits of the divorce, the death of Hoskuld and the burning of Nial, which are given with great minuteness.

Now, however, in order to obtain substantial help from taxes instead of mere driblets, the Valois needed a stronger lever than cunning or force.

He had retained all the habits of a country gentleman of his native Beam, careless, familiar, boastful, thrifty, cunning, combined since his sojourn at the court of the Valois with a taint of corruption.

A man of action and not of cunning shifts, he succumbed on the 10th of July to the blows of his own government, which had passed from his hands into those of Robespierre, his ambitious and crafty rival.