Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Sly   /slaɪ/   Listen
adjective
Sly  adj.  (compar. slyer or slier; superl. slyest or sliest)  
1.
Dexterous in performing an action, so as to escape notice; nimble; skillful; cautious; shrewd; knowing; in a good sense. "Be ye sly as serpents, and simple as doves." "Whom graver age And long experience hath made wise and sly."
2.
Artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily. "For my sly wiles and subtle craftiness, The litle of the kingdom I possess."
3.
Done with, and marked by, artful and dexterous secrecy; subtle; as, a sly trick. "Envy works in a sly and imperceptible manner."
4.
Light or delicate; slight; thin. (Obs.)
By the sly, or On the sly, in a sly or secret manner. (Colloq.) "Gazed on Hetty's charms by the sly."
Sly goose (Zool.), the common sheldrake; so named from its craftiness.
Synonyms: Cunning; crafty; subtile; wily. See Cunning.



adverb
Sly  adv.  Slyly. (Obs. or Poetic)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Sly" Quotes from Famous Books



... and bridegroom, And couples in a train, Gay partners time and travail Had longwhiles stilled amain! . . . It seemed a thing for weeping To find, at slumber's wane And morning's sly increeping, That ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... down, a sly old fellow rose, and waving his long brush with a graceful air, said, with a sneer, that if, like the last speaker, he had been so unfortunate as to lose his tail, nothing further would have been needed to convince him; but till such an accident should happen, he should ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... walk; "I am proud of him, we all ought to be proud of him. He is a whole-souled, whole-hearted, right-minded young man, worth a dozen of your fashionable milk-sops. He is a right down splendid fellow. I cannot imagine why this sly little puss was so blind to his merits; but I suppose the greater glory dimmed ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... to Abelard," your "Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady," and some others you wrote in your youth, there is more fire of poetry than in any of mine. You excelled in the pathetic, which I never approached. I will also allow that you hit the manner of Horace and the sly delicacy of his wit more exactly than I, or than any other man who has written since his time. Nor could I, nor did even Lucretius himself, make philosophy so poetical, and embellish it with such charms as you have given to that of Plato, or (to speak more ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... brush heap—in short, he was as fine a specimen of a poor white as one could find anywhere in the seceded States. He looked stupid as well as shiftless, but the young pilot knew he wasn't. He was as sly as a fox and as cunning as well, and Marcy confessed to himself that he stood more in fear of him than he did of Captain Beardsley. When the man heard Marcy's step upon the porch, he tried to assume the servile air which was characteristic of poor Southern whites before the war; ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon


More quotes...



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org