sly

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

From BBC ● May 8, 2026

“The long and winding road is more than a song,” he sings, with a sly wink to his Beatles past.

From Salon ● Apr. 24, 2026

I saw his pale skin turned purple, his sly mouth gone flat.

From Slate ● Apr. 23, 2026

Mr. Polito thereby gives us a poet who isn’t “just a blazing, mercurial, ingenious reviser of his own words and melodies but also a conscious, sly, artist.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 6, 2026

She had a sly smile but didn’t appreciate sarcasm the way my mother did.

From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama

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 Purves, D. Laing

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

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

They don’t do so as self-righteous scolds or as stuffed shirts; they’re slyer than that, more entertaining.

From Salon ● Jul. 25, 2012

At home, Miguel said, Michael had become slyer in his disobedience.

From New York Times ● May 17, 2012

He laughs again, and the nasty laugh admits I’m slyer than he guessed.

From "Grendel" by John Gardner

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

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

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

"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 Warren, Samuel

It is the play’s slyest and richest joke that it takes a commoner, with great hair and a keen sartorial sense, to explain what royalty means today.

From New York Times ● Jan. 28, 2015

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

These jokes expired about the time Twitter’s co-founders taught Oprah how to tweet on the air in 2009, and yet here they are, on one of the slyest shows on television in 2013.

From Slate ● Feb. 8, 2013

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

Well, you see, the lynx is the slyest thing that goes on four legs.

From Children of the Wild by Roberts, Charles George Douglas, Sir