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devious

[dee-vee-uhs] / ˈdi vi əs /




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.

Meanwhile the narrator’s financially devious husband appears as a vulture with “the brooding eye, the blood-tipped beak, the flabby folds of flesh” of a bird of prey.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 24, 2025

In less flattering terms, Ivorian opposition newspaper Le Patriote wrote: "Laurent Gbagbo - expansive, warm, and devious... his wife, Simone Ehivet-Gbagbo - enigmatic, cold, and secretive."

From BBC • Sep. 12, 2025

Using the same paint to render George and Bertha, however, yields a devious kind of portrait.

From Salon • Jun. 22, 2025

“People know me as a striver, someone who’s always coming up with devious, clever ways around things, who then gets punched in the face by the world over and over,” Odenkirk says.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 30, 2025

We had defended ourselves since memory against everything and everybody, considered all speech a code to be broken by us, and all gestures subject to careful analysis; we had become headstrong, devious and arrogant.

From "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison




Vocabulary lists containing devious