sly

His nimble, stylish solo on Henry Mancini’s 1963 theme to the police-caper comedy “The Pink Panther” became cultural shorthand for an era of sly jazz panache.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 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

On the plane, just a few pages into the novel, I was struck by Wharton’s sly deployment of punctuation.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 5, 2026

Now in the big Greek’s expression Singer thought that he could detect something sly and joking.

From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

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

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

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

Like most musicals, his and Bock’s keep circling the subject, but with a slyer view of the rage and redemption that go into it.

From New York Times ● Jun. 23, 2023

One of the slyer jokes in “No Sudden Move,” Steven Soderbergh’s smart, insouciantly twisty thriller set in 1954 Detroit, is how little some of its characters know about cars.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2021

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

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

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

Where The White Lotus ends up, is, in some ways, the slyest joke of all.

From Slate ● Jul. 12, 2021

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

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

They were the slyest, smartest rogues on all the Green Meadows or in all the Green Forest.

From Old Granny Fox by Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo)