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.
Source: tatoeba (557873)
Wily
//ˈwaɪ.li//
Synonyms for "wily" (100 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (20)
Strong matches (30)
Related words (50)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Translations
60 translations across 27 languages.
Ancient Greek
1 entries- κίδαφος adj (sly, cunning)
Bulgarian
2 entries- лукав adj (sly, cunning)
- хитър adj (sly, cunning)
Chinese Mandarin
1 entries- 狡猾 adj (sly, cunning)
Czech
1 entries- prohnaný adj (sly, cunning)
Danish
1 entries- snu adj (sly, cunning)
Dutch
2 entries- gewiekst adj (sly, cunning)
- snood adj (sly, cunning)
Finnish
4 entries- juonikas adj (sly, cunning)
- kavala adj (sly, cunning)
- kiero adj (sly, cunning)
- luihu adj (sly, cunning)
French
3 entries- fourbe adj (sly, cunning)
- perfide adj (sly, cunning)
- rusé adj (sly, cunning)
Galician
1 entries- astuto adj (sly, cunning)
German
3 entries- gerissen adj (sly, cunning)
- listig adj (sly, cunning)
- schlau adj (sly, cunning)
Greek
2 entries- πανούργος adj (sly, cunning)
- πονηρός adj (sly, cunning)
Hungarian
1 entries- ravasz adj (sly, cunning)
Italian
3 entries- furbo adj (sly, cunning)
- sornione adj (sly, cunning)
- subdolo adj (sly, cunning)
Japanese
2 entries- 狡い adj (sly, cunning)
- 狡猾な adj (sly, cunning)
Korean
1 entries- 교활한 adj (sly, cunning)
Latin
3 entries- dolōsus adj (sly, cunning)
- vafer adj (sly, cunning)
- versūtus adj (sly, cunning)
Māori
1 entries- hangahangarau adj (sly, cunning)
Occitan
3 entries- enganaire adj (sly, cunning)
- fals adj (sly, cunning)
- ganèl adj (sly, cunning)
Ottoman Turkish
2 entries- آصمق adj (sly, cunning)
- قورناز adj (sly, cunning)
Plautdietsch
1 entries- schlau adj (sly, cunning)
Polish
3 entries- chytry adj (sly, cunning)
- przebiegły adj (sly, cunning)
- sprytny adj (sly, cunning)
Portuguese
3 entries- finório adj (sly, cunning)
- ladino adj (sly, cunning)
- matreiro adj (sly, cunning)
Russian
4 entries- изворо́тливый adj (sly, cunning)
- лука́вый adj (sly, cunning)
- проны́рливый adj (sly, cunning)
- хи́трый adj (sly, cunning)
Scottish Gaelic
3 entries- carach adj (sly, cunning)
- seanacach adj (sly, cunning)
- seòlta adj (sly, cunning)
Slovak
1 entries- prefíkaný adj (sly, cunning)
Spanish
3 entries- astuto adj (sly, cunning)
- listo adj (sly, cunning)
- pillo adj (sly, cunning)
Swedish
3 entries- illistig adj (sly, cunning)
- lömsk adj (sly, cunning)
- slug adj (sly, cunning)
Sample sentences
6 total sentences available.
I know him, a wily, cheeky lad.
Source: tatoeba (2053748)
Tom is a very wily person.
Source: tatoeba (7794807)
He plays a wily detective with a penchant for disguises.
Source: tatoeba (11639656)
Showing 4 of 6 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.