sly
Americanadjective
-
slyer,
comparative
-
slier,
comparative
-
slyest,
superlative
-
sliest
superlative
idioms
adjective
-
crafty; artful
a sly dodge
-
insidious; furtive
a sly manner
-
playfully mischievous; roguish
sly humour
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of sly
First recorded in 1150–1200; Middle English sly, sley , from Old Norse slœgr “sly, cunning” (originally “able to strike, able to slay”); see slay ( def. )
Explanation
When you're sly, you're crafty, cunning, tricky, and wily. Being sly is being deceitful, though not in the worst way. If you're good at lying, you're quite sly: people who are sly are good at pulling one over on other people. Being sly helps you get away with things. If you made a mess in your house but got your parents to blame the dog, that was sly. Being sly means you're not being honest, but this word has kind of a harmless flavor to it. Someone who killed someone and lied about it would not be described as sly. Slyness has to do with smaller, sneakier, more harmless kinds of lying.
Vocabulary lists containing sly
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
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Scrabble: Words with no Vowels
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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:
You have to be clever, not sly, in how you deal with it.
From BBC ● May 8, 2026
In the live-wire 2015 comedy-drama “Dope” and as the voice of Miles Morales in the “Spider-Verse” films, Moore proved himself a sly, likable star with flirty charm.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2026
“The long and winding road is more than a song,” he sings, with a sly wink to his Beatles past.
From Salon ● Apr. 24, 2026
I saw his pale skin turned purple, his sly mouth gone flat.
From Slate ● Apr. 23, 2026
“Already waiting back in the city,” Rio said with a sly grin.
From "City Spies" by James Ponti
But I began to suspect he was up to something slier in the course of this 800-plus-page doorstopper.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2021
Julia understands digital media—and print media, for that matter—as well as anyone I’ve ever met, and every day she made the Slate we were editing together slier and fresher and more fun.
From Slate ● Oct. 26, 2018
It’s only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
The hungry thousands that crowded and pushed at Willard's thought him one of them, only deeper and slier.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861 by Various
He had a Sompnour ready to his hand, A slier boy was none in Engleland; For subtlely he had his espiaille,* *espionage That taught him well where it might aught avail.
From The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems by D. Laing Purves
I just adore how it seems to embolden Young, to make him brasher, slyer, swaggier.
From New York Times ● Apr. 28, 2022
One of the slyer jokes in “No Sudden Move,” Steven Soderbergh’s smart, insouciantly twisty thriller set in 1954 Detroit, is how little some of its characters know about cars.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2021
And other late-night hosts also frankly and straightforwardly used the word on Monday, which was refreshing—though some were slyer about its usage than others.
From Slate ● Jul. 30, 2019
They don’t do so as self-righteous scolds or as stuffed shirts; they’re slyer than that, more entertaining.
From Salon ● Jul. 25, 2012
So it’s interesting, and more than a little disturbing, to see how Barb turned out—that she’s meaner and slyer than I am, more cherishing of grudges, and not quite as smart as I’d hoped.
From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
One of the last performances I saw in 2017 was one of the sliest: Billy Crudup in David Cale’s “Harry Clarke” at New York’s Vineyard Theatre.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 16, 2018
"Will my learned friend," said Mr. P —— with one of his sliest sneers, "inform us what motive the defendant could possibly have to keep back a witness so necessary to him?"
From The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney by Samuel Warren
The sliest old thief that you ever did see; Hi, ho, see the chips fly!
From The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum by Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) Burgess
Where The White Lotus ends up, is, in some ways, the slyest joke of all.
From Slate ● Jul. 12, 2021
It is the play’s slyest and richest joke that it takes a commoner, with great hair and a keen sartorial sense, to explain what royalty means today.
From New York Times ● Jan. 28, 2015
Peter Debruge in Variety noted "of all the satirists working in cinema today, Östlund displays perhaps the slyest streak of dark humor."
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2014
Where the network’s “True Detective” occasionally broke its dolefulness with the slyest, philosophically artful wink at an audience riveted by its mystery, “The Leftovers” grafts more unhappiness onto unhappiness.
From Washington Post
The Poppy is the slyest magician of the whole garden.
From Old-Time Gardens Newly Set Forth by Alice Morse Earle
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.
