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sly

adj
/slaɪ/

Etymology

From Middle English sly, sley, sleigh, sleiȝ, from Old Norse slǿgr (“sly, cunning”, literally “capable of hitting or striking”), from Proto-Germanic *slōgiz (“lively, agile, cunning, sly, striking”), from Proto-Indo-European *slak- (“to hit, throw”). Cognate with Icelandic slægur (“crafty, sly”), Norwegian Nynorsk sløg (“sly”). Related to sleight, slay. In all likelihood, however, unrelated with Saterland Frisian slau (“sly, crafty”), Dutch sluw (“sly, cunning”), Low German slu (“sly, cunning”), German schlau (“clever, crafty”). Doublet of sleight and slöjd

  1. derived from *slak-✻ — “to hit, throw”
  2. derived from *slōgiz✻ — “lively, agile, cunning, sly, striking”
  3. derived from slǿgr — “sly, cunning”
  4. inherited from sly

Definitions

  1. Artfully cunning

    Artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily.

  2. Dexterous in performing an action, so as to escape notice

  3. Done with, and marked by, artful and dexterous secrecy

    Done with, and marked by, artful and dexterous secrecy; subtle

    • a sly trick
  4. ›+ 4 more definitions

    1. Light or delicate

      Light or delicate; slight; thin.

    2. Slyly.

    3. A diminutive of the male given name Sylvester.

    4. A surname

The neighborhood

Derived

by the sly, on the sly, sliness, sly as a fox, slyboots, sly dog, sly fox, sly-grog, slyish, slyness, unsly

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at sly. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01sly02secrecy03keeping04conformity05complying06comply07conform08policy09craftiness10slyness

A definitional loop anchored at sly. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

10 hops · closes at sly

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA