canny
Americanadjective
adverb
-
in a canny manner.
-
Scot. carefully; cautiously.
adjective
-
shrewd, esp in business; astute or wary; knowing
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dialect good or nice: used as a general term of approval
-
lucky or fortunate
adverb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of canny
Explanation
If you're a canny investor, you know how to spend money to make money — that is, you're prudent, farsighted, and capable of protecting your own interests, particularly in matters of finance or business. In contemporary usage, canny is a synonym for shrewd. Both words mean smart or sharp-witted, but they also suggest that someone is smart in a self-serving and possibly even tricky way. Canny is also related to the word cunning — another adjective meaning "wise," but with negative connotations. Uncanny is not the opposite of canny — it means "weird" or "unsettling."
Vocabulary lists containing canny
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Beowulf
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But the pair are just the latest in the long line of hustlers, fraudsters and canny opportunists who have been working to undermine science in this country for more than a century.
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2026
"His reaction, for someone who's normally pretty canny when it comes to the media, is extraordinarily counterproductive," said Bale.
From Barron's ● Jul. 6, 2026
“God Bless America,” written at the end of World War I, was shelved until the canny Berlin unveiled it in 1938 as the storm clouds, as his lyric says, were gathering in Europe.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
Her versatility - she was threatening with the new ball and canny at the death - will be crucial at the World Cup.
From BBC ● Jun. 2, 2026
Now he was blocked and it made him restless, possibly less canny.
From "Johnny Tremain" by Esther Hoskins Forbes
But it would have been cannier of Barnes to make her a genuinely convincing provocateur.
From New York Times ● Aug. 17, 2022
"If Don had been better informed, he might have been cannier about the potential complications that come with coaching an adolescent girl. Clearly, he wasn't a predator," she added.
From BBC ● Apr. 20, 2022
He needs to be a much cannier person and not show his lining too much.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2020
In this relationship, she’s the cannier and the crueler.
From Slate ● Aug. 8, 2019
And those colliers were reckless with their cash, far readier to commit themselves to buying than the cannier country bodies round.
From The House with the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown
Penetrating a well-placed camera can get analysts closer to targets and carries less risk than infiltrating even the canniest secret agent.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 11, 2026
Simon Russell Beale, to my mind the canniest wielder of dramatic poetry in the English language, was honored for his mesmerizing lead performance.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2022
Wolfson is widely considered to be one of the canniest operators in UK retail and NEXT's significant on-line business has helped the company weather the assault of e-commerce on traditional retail.
From BBC ● Feb. 18, 2021
But control is just one effect, and in some ways the canniest — nothing else so efficiently earns the reader’s trust and can lull her into sleepy credulity.
From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 2021
The moral which fits the bill here, I think, is survival of the canniest.
From Behind the News: Voices from Goa's Press by Various
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
