Sample sentences for CANNY - verbalworkout.com

(click/touch triangles for details)

Definition

cleverness in dealing with others — especially in business

a canny investor

a crew of canny thieves
Our people like it, and I think we are a pretty canny set.
Louisa May Alcott -- Eight Cousins
It's no canny to run frae London to the Black Sea wi' a wind ahint ye, as though the Deil himself were blawin' on yer sail for his ain purpose.
Bram Stoker -- Dracula
A cannier man might have argued even so, but Junior didn't have it in him and he changed the subject to the bathroom arrangements.
Anne Tayler -- A Spool of Blue Thread
This was a rather legalistic maneuver, but Phaedrus by this time had developed a kind of combative canniness.
Robert M. Pirsig -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

(Editor's note: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.)

Emma flashed a canny smile.
Ransom Riggs -- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
She'd seen him sidle up to women in public places to ask some delving question in his blank-faced canny way.
Don DeLillo -- White Noise
My wife was on all fours now, racing around the terminal as the frogs cannily stayed one hop ahead of her.
John Grogan -- Marley & Me
Is she got a reggiler big canny staw?
Henry Roth -- Call It Sleep
They figured if he had seen them he was a canny one, but they lay quiet, curious like squirrels.
Louis L'Amour -- The Broken Gun
Cannily, all Randy said was, "If you have Preacher's permission, it's all right with me.
Pat Frank -- Alas, Babylon
I battled him with all my strength and canniness about the game.
Pat Conroy -- The Lords of Discipline

(Editor's note: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.)

That's what I want cannily to prevent.
Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1
We shall get you off cannily, Dick: and it will be better, both for your sake, and for that of the poor creature in yonder.
Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre
Hoots, but they're na canny.
T. H. White -- The Once and Future King
He had the canny self-assurance of an industry maverick, the outsider who tries to roil the works, japing every complacent rule of belief.
Don DeLillo -- Underworld
That's what I want cannily to prevent.
Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volumes 1 & 2
There was a kind of quiet wisdom or canniness there, no doubt of that.
V.S. Naipaul -- A Bend in the River

(Editor's note: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.)

When all was silent, he smiled a canny smile and spoke in his deepest down-home southern drawl.
Russell Baker -- Growing Up

Dictionary / pronunciation — Google^®Dictionary list — Onelook.com^®

Search for other examples by interest

Interest — Source

canny