Sample sentences for WILY - verbalworkout.com

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Definition

clever and good at tricking others to achieve a goal

Don't underestimate her. She is a wily campaigner.

wily = clever and good at tricking others

The wily fox avoided the trap and managed to get into the chicken coop.

wily = clever

Don't underestimate that wily old attorney.

wily = clever and good at tricking others

She is known for her wily ways.

wily = clever and good at tricking others

The Devil, as Reverend Hale said, is a wily one, and, until an hour before he fell, even God thought him beautiful in Heaven.
Arthur Miller -- The Crucible

wily = tricky

He is so speedy, so wily, that mall workers long ago gave up trying to catch him.
Katherine Applegate -- The One and Only Ivan

wily = clever

Nwoye knew that it was right to be masculine and to be violent, but somehow he still preferred the stories that his mother used to tell, and which she no doubt still told to her younger children—stories of the tortoise and his wily ways, and of...
Chinua Achebe -- Things Fall Apart

wily = clever

But the Devil is a wily one, you cannot deny it.
Arthur Miller -- The Crucible

wily = tricky

Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water.
Chinua Achebe -- Things Fall Apart

wily = clever

He was more interested in Michael's capacity to serve as an entertaining big brother and wily co-conspirator.
Michael Lewis -- The Blind Side
The man spoke truly; he might unwittingly, in sheer terror, utter the shriek that might prove a warning to the wily Scarlet Pimpernel.
Baroness Orczy -- The Scarlet Pimpernel
The prattle of the little ones and their pleasure in the stories I told them of elf and gnome, of hero and wily bear, are pleasant things to remember.
Helen Keller -- Story of My Life
"Because we're wily," said Hugh.
Ransom Riggs -- Hollow City
So wily, and we must follow with wile.
Bram Stoker -- Dracula
No wily hates sought I; for myself swore not many Of oaths in unright.
Unknown -- Beowulf
The wily practices, and the covert ways, I knew them all, and I so plied their art that to the earth's end the sound went forth.
Dante Alighieri -- Dante's Inferno
There was silence for as long as two seconds and then the wily village voice began to answer him, 'We are poor, father.
Graham Greene -- The Power and the Glory
'What is it now, I say,' pursued the wily usurer, 'or what has it a chance of being?
Charles Dickens -- Nicholas Nickleby
I could never abide the weeping of women, Joff once said, but his mother was the wily woman weeping now.
George R.R. Martin -- A Storm of Swords
I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom.
Mary Shelley -- Frankenstein

(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.)

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