Wily
//ˈwaɪ.li// adj
adj ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
Adjective
- 1 Sly, cunning, full of tricks.
"Horatio's new girlfriend is a wily coquette, and poor Horatio is too smitten to see it."
Adjective
- 1 marked by skill in deception wordnet
Example
More examples"A wily hunter, Christopher Columbus once donned a red riding hood and went into the forest. Without a doubt, he attracted the Big Bad Wolf, grabbed him, and dragged the screaming wolf back to his ship."
Etymology
From Middle English wily, wiley, wyly. By surface analysis, wil(e) + -y.
Related phrases
More for "wily"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.