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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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:
Then an army of serfs and others marched on the king to demand basic rights, led by the canny ex-soldier Wat Tyler and the popular preacher John Ball.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026
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
It will take more than stolen KitKats and canny marketing to turn the company around.
From Barron's ● Jun. 10, 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
But he was strong, and canny with his pennies: somehow he saved up enough for a cow — Our Cow. not six years old, and strong enough to plow.
From "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village" by Laura Amy Schlitz
If Adams were cannier and less damaged, he could find a comfortable way to win.
From Slate ● Sep. 12, 2024
"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
Governments have become cannier at exploiting the connectivity of the digital era to advance their interests and weaken their enemies.
From New York Times ● Jul. 20, 2021
He needs to be a much cannier person and not show his lining too much.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2020
He freely consented to settle every penny he had upon his wife, and, as his mother-in-law justly remarked, “Many a cannier man wouldn’t just have done that.”
From Six to Sixteen A Story for Girls by Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
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
One of the canniest things about the Wick films is how they riff on Reeves’ public image.
From The Guardian ● May 18, 2019
But Sarah isn't about to relinquish her grip on either her sanity or her fortune, and Mirren, among the canniest of screen actors, supplies a rational impulse for her every Miss Havisham-like eccentricity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 2, 2018
It was the canniest thing she could have done to re-establish herself in Davidge’s eyes.
From The Cup of Fury A Novel of Cities and Shipyards by Henry Raleigh
Definitions 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.
