sly

I won’t say who the mob boss is, but the appearance of this Oscar winner is one of many typically unpredictable little instances of sly perfection.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2026

Of the two angry men, Mr. Brownlee’s raging Mitridate was quite a different creature from Mr. Costanzo’s sly, malicious Farnace.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026

Except her version of fun involves vengeance, sly righteousness and the exposure of humanity’s darker tendencies.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2026

You have to be clever, not sly, in how you deal with it.

From BBC ● May 8, 2026

Mr. Flux said, “Donny, you sly dog. You’ve really made something of yourself, haven’t you?”

From "The Last Last-Day-of-Summer" by Lamar Giles

But I began to suspect he was up to something slier in the course of this 800-plus-page doorstopper.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2021

Julia understands digital media—and print media, for that matter—as well as anyone I’ve ever met, and every day she made the Slate we were editing together slier and fresher and more fun.

From Slate ● Oct. 26, 2018

It’s only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood

He had a Sompnour ready to his hand, A slier boy was none in Engleland; For subtlely he had his espiaille,* *espionage That taught him well where it might aught avail.

From The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems by D. Laing Purves

The hungry thousands that crowded and pushed at Willard's thought him one of them, only deeper and slier.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861 by Various

Considering the series’ tone and genre, one may expect the conversion to shift into the age-old “Die Hard” debate – but series creator Joe Barton is slyer than that.

From Salon ● Dec. 7, 2024

And in one of the film’s slyer jokes, the hip-hop song “White Boy Summer” by their son Chet Hanks is used to personify a certain kind of clueless obliviousness in others.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 28, 2022

And other late-night hosts also frankly and straightforwardly used the word on Monday, which was refreshing—though some were slyer about its usage than others.

From Slate ● Jul. 30, 2019

Humor in the later stories, while seldom entirely absent, is slyer and quicker.

From New York Times ● Nov. 23, 2016

So it’s interesting, and more than a little disturbing, to see how Barb turned out—that she’s meaner and slyer than I am, more cherishing of grudges, and not quite as smart as I’d hoped.

From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich

One of the last performances I saw in 2017 was one of the sliest: Billy Crudup in David Cale’s “Harry Clarke” at New York’s Vineyard Theatre.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 16, 2018

"Will my learned friend," said Mr. P —— with one of his sliest sneers, "inform us what motive the defendant could possibly have to keep back a witness so necessary to him?"

From The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney by Samuel Warren

The sliest old thief that you ever did see; Hi, ho, see the chips fly!

From The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum by Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) Burgess

Peter Debruge in Variety noted "of all the satirists working in cinema today, Östlund displays perhaps the slyest streak of dark humor."

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2014

I’d just marry whichever girl flaunted—over the course of several rec-hall dances and town-square picnics—the slyest wit and the cutest smile.

From Slate ● Feb. 1, 2013

He was riveting, but in the slyest possible way.

From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2010

Where the network’s “True Detective” occasionally broke its dolefulness with the slyest, philosophically artful wink at an audience riveted by its mystery, “The Leftovers” grafts more unhappiness onto unhappiness.

From Washington Post

The coyote, or prairie-wolf, is the slyest animal that walks on four legs.

From The Boy Settlers A Story of Early Times in Kansas by W. A. (William Allen) Rogers