tricky
Americanadjective
-
trickier,
comparative
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trickiest
superlative
adjective
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involving snags or difficulties
a tricky job
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needing careful and tactful handling
a tricky situation
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characterized by tricks; sly; wily
a tricky dealer
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of tricky
Explanation
If something is tricky, it's difficult, like a tricky puzzle. And if a person is tricky, they're sneaky, skilled, or crafty, like a tricky magician who makes it look easy to pull quarters out of your ears. A tricky riddle is extremely hard to figure out, and a tricky question on a math test is even trickier if you can't use a calculator to solve it. In their 1986 rap classic, "It's Tricky," Run-DMC claimed that "it's tricky...to rock a rhyme that's right on time" — or in other words, it's really difficult to write a clever rap lyric.
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:
And then there are just simply words in the American dialect that can take me down, like “murderer” or “world,” sometimes “girl” is tricky.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
These are tricky days for the American sports parent.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
Berkshire Hathaway has been putting more money into beaten-down home builders, but timing a recovery in the housing market is tricky.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 19, 2026
Joining the pact could prove tricky for the UK and would require unanimous approval from all EU states.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Pieret happened to pick an object that was impossible to sell, tricky to steal, and specifically desired by Picasso.
From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day
While building steel warheads and tanks takes time, ramping up production of nitrocellulose is even trickier.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
Throw in that his first attempt to have a crack at changing the welfare system was rejected by his own MPs and the challenge got trickier still.
From BBC ● Jul. 1, 2026
With every passing hour, it becomes a little trickier to find food and water in the markets of La Guaira, which was decimated by Wednesday's quakes of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
He has a low-key comic energy and helps guide the story through a few of its trickier emotional turns.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
"All we have to work with is the camera. He can write notes and hold them up. But how we talk back is trickier."
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
Perhaps the trickiest what-if scenario involves eldercare concerns.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 1, 2026
The deeper mystery, one I’d still like explained, is how Early found the time to learn how to mimic Douglas Sirk’s sneaky sincerity, the trickiest of directorial tones.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 26, 2026
The trickiest part may be settling on a share price -- the cost of one piece of ownership in the company when it first hits the market.
From Barron's ● May 17, 2026
Judging whether the ball has touched a player's hand can be one of the trickiest roles of the VAR.
From BBC ● May 3, 2026
He always had to prove himself the smartest, the trickiest, and above all, the most renowned.
From "Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky" by Kwame Mbalia
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.
