Sample Sentences for
devious
(editor-reviewed)

devious as in:  a devious plan

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  • •
    He is a devious, dangerous man.  (source)
    devious = deceitful (not honest and straightforward)
  • •
    Some part of me has planned this, a devious internal compass pointed to the past.  (source)
  • •
    The computer-controlled enemy was devious and powerful, and whenever Ender tried a tactic he found the computer using it against him within minutes.  (source)
    devious = harmfully clever
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Show 10 more with 3 word variations
  • •
    all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters,  (source)
    devious = deceitful (and possibly clever and complicated)
  • •
    Ruth was a pale but complicated woman given to deviousness and ultra-fine manners.  (source)
    deviousness = deceit (not honest and straightforward) -- often in a complicated, clever manner
    standard suffix: 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.
  • •
    He learned of the use of cobalt bombs by both the Russians and the Chinese; that news came deviously from Australia, relayed from Kenya.†  (source)
  • •
    By damn, man, if there is one human being in the world less devious than Robert Lee, I aint yet met him.  (source)
    devious = tricky (deceitful in a complicated, clever manner)
  • •
    Her husband turned out to be not just a heavy drinker but a full-blown alcoholic with all an alcoholic's deviousness and tragic charm.†  (source)
  • •
    Here the road, gleaming faintly, passed over the stream in the midst of the valley, and went on, winding deviously up towards the city's gate: a black mouth opening in the outer circle of the northward walls.†  (source)
  • •
    True Grail academics agreed that Rosslyn was a decoy—one of the devious dead ends the Priory crafted so convincingly.  (source)
    devious = intentionally misleading
  • •
    This deviousness, the quick shuffle out the philosophy door seemed to indicate that the Chairman for some reason was unable to throw him out the front door of the committee, even with that outrageous letter in hand, and that gave Phaedrus some confidence.†  (source)
  • •
    He was perpetually slinking away; whenever seen he was seen moving off deviously, his face over his shoulder, with either a mistrustful snarl or a woe-begone, piteous, mute aspect; but no assumed expression could conceal this innate irremediable abjectness of his nature, any more than an arrangement of clothing can conceal some monstrous deformity of the body.†  (source)
  • •
    By a devious track between the fields they wound back to the Starkfield road.  (source)
    devious = indirect
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