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CRAFTY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
Irregular inflected forms: craftier , craftiest
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Marked by skill in deception
Example:
a wily old attorney
Synonyms:
crafty; cunning; dodgy; foxy; guileful; knavish; slick; sly; tricksy; tricky; wily
Classified under:
Similar:
artful (marked by skill in achieving a desired end especially with cunning or craft)
Derivation:
craft; craftiness (shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception)
Context examples:
It was early in the days of his persecution that he played his first really big crafty game and got therefrom his first taste of revenge.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
At night when the sleeping princess was again carried through the streets, some peas certainly did fall out of her pocket, but they made no track, for the crafty manikin had just before scattered peas in every street there was.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
Oh, go-roo! (it is really impossible to express how he twisted this ejaculation out of himself, as he peeped round the door-post at me, showing nothing but his crafty old head); will you go for fourpence?
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Thus, the pair of lovers could be jarred apart by misunderstood motives, by accident of fate, by jealous rivals, by irate parents, by crafty guardians, by scheming relatives, and so forth and so forth; they could be reunited by a brave deed of the man lover, by a similar deed of the woman lover, by change of heart in one lover or the other, by forced confession of crafty guardian, scheming relative, or jealous rival, by voluntary confession of same, by discovery of some unguessed secret, by lover storming girl's heart, by lover making long and noble self-sacrifice, and so on, endlessly.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The gods were ever crafty, and they had unguessed ways of attaining their ends.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
They looked forward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while they were not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by White Fang.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
He learned to sneak about camp, to be crafty, to know what was going on everywhere, to see and to hear everything and to reason accordingly, and successfully to devise ways and means of avoiding his implacable persecutor.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
