wily
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of wily
Middle English word dating back to 1250–1300; see origin at wile, -y 1
Explanation
Did you fall for that wily door-to-door salesman's pitch? He must be very slick and tricky to have convinced you to buy a set of new tires, considering you don't have a car. How can you remember the meaning of the adjective wily? Just think about the old Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoons. Their aptly named cartoon character, Wile E. Coyote, got his name from a clever play on words. Wile E. is supposed to be cunning, crafty, and clever — in other words, wily. Wile E. is all those things, but unfortunately he was usually bested by that pesky roadrunner anyway. Meep. Meep.
Vocabulary lists containing wily
300 Most Difficult "SAT" Words
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List 7
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The Watsons Go to Birmingham
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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.
Ghana's wily coach Carlos Queiroz seemed to take great pleasure in suggesting - several times - that England had "no solutions".
From BBC • Jun. 24, 2026
What about Novak Djokovic, that wily old goat rattling around the bracket, 24 majors to his name?
From The Wall Street Journal • May 30, 2026
The Rangers head coach has been put out of the League Cup, Scottish Cup and now condemned to third place in the Scottish Premiership by his wily old Celtic counterpart Martin O'Neill.
From BBC • May 11, 2026
Here Hyungjin Son, the bumpkin-ish Bardolph in “Falstaff,” portrayed the Count, while Colclough was the wily Figaro.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 29, 2026
A wily speaker will have the capacity to jump back and forth between the judicial and the deliberative branches like an oratorical orangutan.
From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith
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.
