SLY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Sly

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adjective

Sly adj. (compar. slyer or slier; superl. slyest or sliest)

Dexterous in performing an action, so as to escape notice; nimble; skillful; cautious; shrewd; knowing; in a good sense. "Be ye sly as serpents, and simple as doves." "Whom graver age And long experience hath made wise and sly."

Artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily. "For my sly wiles and subtle craftiness, The litle of the kingdom I possess."

Done with, and marked by, artful and dexterous secrecy; subtle; as, a sly trick. "Envy works in a sly and imperceptible manner."

Light or delicate; slight; thin. (Obs.)

By the sly, or On the sly, in a sly or secret manner. (Colloq.) "Gazed on Hetty's charms by the sly."

Sly goose (Zool.), the common sheldrake; so named from its craftiness.

Synonyms: Cunning; crafty; subtile; wily. See Cunning.

adverb

Sly adv. Slyly. (Obs. or Poetic)

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Etymology of 'Sly'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sly" Quotes from Famous Books

... of the Commissioner of Agriculture herewith contains suggestions of much interest to the general public, and refers to the sly approaching Centennial and the part his Department is ready to take in it. I feel that the nation at large is interested in having this exposition a success, and commend to Congress such action as will secure a greater general interest in ...

— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... way among them, and became acquainted with their children, there had sprung up a most curious sort of understanding between the Butterfly Man on the one side, and the half-articulate foreigners in the factory and the sly secretive ...

— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... we would sit down to chess and then Fyne's everlasting gravity became faintly tinged by an attenuated gleam of something inward which resembled sly satisfaction. Of the divine frivolity of laughter he was only capable over a chess-board. Certain positions of the game struck him as humorous, which nothing else on earth ...

— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... taboo of the names of the dead, how differently would he have gone to work! how eager would he have been to display and explain his knowledge of this remarkable Romany superstition! The same remark may be made upon the gipsy heroine’s sly allusion in ‘Kriegspiel’ to “Squire Lucas,” the Romany equivalent of Baron Munchausen, an allusion which none but ...

— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... out very oddly; don't they?' said Mark with a sly glance of complacency, and his hands in his pockets. 'But I know you'll hold the tiller till I get through; hang me if I know the soundings, or where I'm going; and you have ...

— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

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