Sly

//slaɪ// adj, adv, name

adj, adv, name ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily.
  2. 2
    Dexterous in performing an action, so as to escape notice
  3. 3
    Done with, and marked by, artful and dexterous secrecy; subtle

    "a sly trick"

  4. 4
    Light or delicate; slight; thin.
Adjective
  1. 1
    marked by skill in deception wordnet
Adverb
  1. 1
    Slyly.
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A diminutive of the male given name Sylvester.
  2. 2
    A surname

Synonyms

All synonyms
artfulcraftycunningguilefulknowingsharp

Example

More examples

"I don't like him because he is sly as a fox."

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

Related phrases

Sly syndromeby the slyon the slysly as a foxsly dogsly foxsly-grog

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.