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wily
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  • She saves everything like a wily squirrel.†   (source)
  • But correspondents are a wily bunch.†   (source)
  • Tess, though, is slender and wily.†   (source)
  • The flat, foolish pallathi, the silver paral, the wily, whiskered koori, the sometimes karimeen.†   (source)
  • He was a wily one, no doubt about it.†   (source)
  • Yes, Amy is using a Madness song to give me a clue to my own freedom, if only I can decipher their wily, ska-infused codes.†   (source)
  • Slowly, his lips twist in a wily smile.†   (source)
  • The titles were near as long as books themselves: Treatise on the Propagation of Sheep, the Manufacture of Wool, and the Cultivation and Manufacture of Flax, by John Wily, or Cato Major, Or His Discourse of Old-Age: With Explanatory Notes, by M. T. Cicero, or Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phillis Wheatley, and countless tracts containing sermons and advice.†   (source)
  • He was more interested in Michael's capacity to serve as an entertaining big brother and wily co-conspirator.†   (source)
  • That Iraqi president was one wily devil, ducking and diving between his thirteen palaces, evading capture, making tape recordings, urging the dregs of his armed forces to keep killing us, encouraging the insurgents to continue the war against the great Satan (that's us).†   (source)
  • A few minutes after that score, the same wily forward for Roswell snuck behind the Fugees defense and blasted another shot past Ervin.†   (source)
  • With a beat and a bang on the bones of the land, I conquered wily old iron!†   (source)
  • She's wily, that one.†   (source)
  • I am so cunning, crafty and clever, so filled with deceit, guile and chicanery, such a knave, so shrewd, cagey as well as calculating, as diabolical as I am vulpine, as tricky as I am untrustworthy ...well, I told you there were not words invented yet to explain how great my brain is, but let me put it this way: the world is several million years old and several billion people have at one time or another trod upon it, but I, Vizzini the Sicilian, am, speaking with pure candor and modesty, the slickest, sleekest, sliest and wiliest fellow who has yet come down the pike.†   (source)
  • They were wily foxes, and worse about joking when the two of them were together.†   (source)
  • Frank calls him Jedgar sometimes and the Director likes the name although he never lets on—it is medieval and princely and wily-dark.†   (source)
  • I know you shoot for sport, but have you ever hunted an animal wilier than you?†   (source)
  • Few women anywhere could resist such wily cajolery, and prostitutes would spring to their feet eagerly and hurl themselves into whatever fantastic poses he requested for them.†   (source)
  • It would have been so easy to heed the wily words of Locaha and sink into the blackness, but that would have drowned her, too.†   (source)
  • For a moment, Max thought Bellagrog would conjure another argument, right her ship with the same wily ingenuity she had demonstrated throughout the afternoon.†   (source)
  • By the time the Bay of Pigs is over he will count among these enemies not only Castro but also one of the highest-ranking officials of the U.S. government: the wily CIA chief, Allen Dulles.†   (source)
  • In Paris the three American envoys would be dealing with the extremely wily and charming new French Foreign Minister, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord.†   (source)
  • He thought of the Threarah and his wily courtesy.†   (source)
  • But they were wily and they had a clandestine assistant.†   (source)
  • "Because we're wily," said Hugh.†   (source)
  • By the second bag, I had become more wily.†   (source)
  • Thus the hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Pheacian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by a song.†   (source)
  • I was just wondering which would be the winner in a contest such as this—an Indian fighter's intuition or that wily old boy, coincidence," Roger wrote later.†   (source)
  • He had no experience dealing with either warlords or wily merchants.†   (source)
  • Wild things are elusive and wily and look out for themselves.†   (source)
  • I could never abide the weeping of women, Joff once said, but his mother was the wily woman weeping now.†   (source)
  • Louisa had proudly watched as Lou rose each time Hit knocked her down, the girl growing not more afraid through each tussle with the wily beast, but rather more determined.†   (source)
  • "Pull it and hear the drum beat," said the wily man, holding out the string to Puli, and how could he resist it, who was only a child, when I myself was enchanted!†   (source)
  • Even as a schoolboy, I loved John Keats's ode "To Autumn" for being an ark of the covenant between language and sensation; as an adolescent, I loved Gerard Manley Hopkins for the intensity of his exclamations which were also equations for a rapture and an ache I didn't fully know I knew until I read him; I loved Robert Frost for his farmer's accuracy and his wily down-to-earthness; and Chaucer too for much the same reasons.†   (source)
  • They were older and stronger and more wily.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile, at Angelo's palate, wily Ercole's string has run out at last.†   (source)
  • George had never caught anything, and the fish in the lagoon were much too wily to be trapped.†   (source)
  • The one bore a wily-looking little man, with a sharp nose and a laughing mouth and a shock of straw-colored hair.†   (source)
  • He's a wily Shanty Mick, that one.†   (source)
  • Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water.   (source)
  • But the Devil is a wily one, you cannot deny it.   (source)
    wily = tricky
  • What we're trying to do is learn to read this sort of thing like a wily old professor, to learn to spot those familiar images, like being able to see the elephant before we connect the dots.   (source)
    wily = clever
  • "Just so," he said with a wily smile.   (source)
    wily = clever or tricky
  • Sir Leigh Teabing had vociferously proclaimed his innocence, and yet from his incoherent rantings about the Holy Grail, secret documents, and mysterious brotherhoods, Fache suspected the wily historian was setting the stage for his lawyers to plead an insanity defense.   (source)
    wily = clever and good at tricking others to achieve a goal
  • And, if I may say so, wily.   (source)
    wily = clever
  • And a wily one too.   (source)
  • He had a wicked and a wily heart, and he knew his guesses were not far out, though he suspected that the Lake-men were at the back of the plans, and that most of the plunder was meant to stop there in the town by the shore that in his young days had been called Esgaroth.   (source)
  • The black tips of their shoes poked out from under their cuffs like the snouts of wily animals.†   (source)
  • I Had to Admit That rabbits were about as as wily it got.†   (source)
  • For over an hour, Eragon hunted Galbatorix's magicians, but to little avail, for they were wily and cunning and did not directly attack him.†   (source)
  • Blagden was too wily, however.†   (source)
  • Wily old iron.†   (source)
  • They were wily, too.†   (source)
  • Doc Daneeka had lost his head during Milo's bombardment; instead of running for cover, he had remained out in the open and performed his duty, slithering along the ground through shrapnel, strafing and incendiary bombs like a furtive, wily lizard from casualty to casualty, administering tourniquets, morphine, splints and sulfanilamide with a dark and doleful visage, never saying one word more than he had to and reading in each man's bluing wound a dreadful portent of his own decay.†   (source)
  • When Buddha wanted the rat to spread his word, the wily creature tried to get a free ride from the horse.†   (source)
  • When Snow Flower and I met again, we compared conversations, laughing at how her aunt was still the same, with her powdered face and wily ways.†   (source)
  • The wily shaman changed himself into a wasp.†   (source)
  • But this wily god never discloses even to the skillful questioner the whole content of his wisdom.†   (source)
  • There was silence for as long as two seconds and then the wily village voice began to answer him, 'We are poor, father.†   (source)
  • Pablo is very wily.†   (source)
  • One further adventure of battle and love, and Cuchulainn returned to find Forgall the Wily still against him.†   (source)
  • When the girl's father, Forgall the Wily, was told that the couple had talked together, he contrived to send Cuchulainn off to learn battle skills from Donall the Soldierly in Alba, supposing the youth would never return.†   (source)
  • In all am I scattered, and whensoever thou wiliest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself.43 The two—the hero and his ultimate god, the seeker and the found are thus understood as the outside and inside of a single, self-mirrored mystery, which is identical with the mystery of the manifest world.†   (source)
  • Don Carlos is a wily Greaser, he knows the ranges, he has the water, and he is dishonest.†   (source)
  • [He searches her face with his eyes, and shakes his finger at her] Oho, you are wily†   (source)
  • No wily hates sought I; for myself swore not many
    Of oaths in unright.†   (source)
  • These despised themselves, as being the dupes of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass.†   (source)
  • Even now we have no clear case against this very wily man.†   (source)
  • I, too, am wily and I think his mind in a little while.†   (source)
  • In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils.†   (source)
  • he is too wily, too cowardly, for such a crime.†   (source)
  • 'What is it now, I say,' pursued the wily usurer, 'or what has it a chance of being?†   (source)
  • But the advance of the wily snake itself is not more certain or noiseless than was his approach.†   (source)
  • So wily was he that he had not trusted himself upon foot, but he had availed himself of a cab so that he could loiter behind or dash past them and so escape their notice.†   (source)
  • And the coxswain, Israel Hands, was a careful, wily, old, experienced seaman who could be trusted at a pinch with almost anything.†   (source)
  • Perhaps Atlanta was not christened for the winged maiden of dull Boeotia; you know the tale,—how swarthy Atalanta, tall and wild, would marry only him who out-raced her; and how the wily Hippomenes laid three apples of gold in the way.†   (source)
  • So wily, and we must follow with wile.†   (source)
  • call me plotter, wily courtier!†   (source)
  • The man spoke truly; he might unwittingly, in sheer terror, utter the shriek that might prove a warning to the wily Scarlet Pimpernel.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • Here stands this black young Atalanta, girding herself for the race that must be run; and if her eyes be still toward the hills and sky as in the days of old, then we may look for noble running; but what if some ruthless or wily or even thoughtless Hippomenes lay golden apples before her?†   (source)
  • His glove hung aloft,
    Wondrous and wide, in wily bands fast,
    With cunning wiles was it begeared forsooth,
    With crafts of the devils and fells of the dragons;
    He me withinwards there, me the unsinning,
    The doer of big deeds would do me to be 2090
    As one of the many; but naught so it might be,
    Sithence in mine anger upright I stood.†   (source)
  • I am sure that, not two leagues from here, we shall come across that wily Reuben, his nag, his cart and the tall stranger all in a heap in the middle of the road.†   (source)
  • [Laughing] You are a wily one†   (source)
  • They told stories of their wonderful feats with fowl, fish and quadruped—how many wild ducks and turkeys they had shot, what "savage trout" they had caught, and how they had bagged the craftiest foxes, outwitted the most clever 'possums and overtaken the fleetest deer, until I thought that surely the lion, the tiger, the bear and the rest of the wild tribe would not be able to stand before these wily hunters.†   (source)
  • Work and wealth are the mighty levers to lift this old new land; thrift and toil and saving are the highways to new hopes and new possibilities; and yet the warning is needed lest the wily Hippomenes tempt Atalanta to thinking that golden apples are the goal of racing, and not mere incidents by the way.†   (source)
  • We moved to explore the house, all keeping together in case of attack, for we knew we had a strong and wily enemy to deal with, and as yet we did not know whether the Count might not be in the house.†   (source)
  • Our old fox is wily.†   (source)
  • Back came the wily doctor.†   (source)
  • One of his comrades, talking of women, began chaffing Rostov, saying that he was more wily than any of them and that it would not be a bad thing if he introduced to them the pretty Polish girl he had saved.†   (source)
  • What a wily person you are!†   (source)
  • The manner in which the Indian approached the place that was supposed to contain enemies, resembled the wily advances of the cat on the bird.†   (source)
  • "You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss Sharp," said the old gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily old fellow said to his son, "Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap at you."†   (source)
  • "And yet I should think, from all we have heard in the towns, that the soldiers on this frontier are used to the artifices of their enemies," said Mabel, "and become almost as wily as the red men themselves."†   (source)
  • Certainly a call to the visitors' room had scarcely astonished Andrea less than themselves, for the wily youth, instead of making use of his privilege of waiting to be claimed on his entry into La Force, had maintained a rigid silence.†   (source)
  • "The will of the nation" is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.†   (source)
  • Thinkest thou, Waldemar, that the wily Archbishop will not suffer thee to be taken from the very horns of the altar, would it make his peace with King Richard?†   (source)
  • He saw, at once, that this wily savage had some secret agency in their present arraignment before the nation, and determined to throw every possible impediment in the way of the execution of his sinister plans.†   (source)
  • The Great Spirit wishes you well, and He has taken away the chief, lest you should be led astray by his wily tongue, and get to be a Mingo in your disposition, as you were already in your company.†   (source)
  • "Has my brother been a warrior?" said the wily Teton, in a tone that he intended should be conciliating.†   (source)
  • "Why, good Sir Maurice," rejoined the wily politician, "start not aside like a scared steed, without, at least, considering the object of your terror.†   (source)
  • But, it would have been a stranger contrast still, to have read the hearts that were beating side by side; to have laid bare the gentle innocence of the one, and the rugged villainy of the other; to have hung upon the guileless thoughts of the affectionate girl, and been amazed that, among all the wily plots and calculations of the old man, there should not be one word or figure denoting thought of death or of the grave.†   (source)
  • Mr. Fagin saw, with delight, that this tribute to his powers was no mere compliment, but that he had really impressed his recruit with a sense of his wily genius, which it was most important that he should entertain in the outset of their acquaintance.†   (source)
  • "As he came, just Tamenund," demanded the wily Magua, "or with hands filled with the faith of the Delawares?†   (source)
  • "No," answered the wily Huron, betraying the artifice he had so long practised, by speaking in English with tolerable accuracy, "I not ask prisoner.†   (source)
  • Content with the momentary examination he had made, the eldest of the group, who was in truth the delinquent sentinel by whose remissness the wily Mahtoree had so well profited, turned towards his father and said bluntly— "If this man is all that is left of the party I saw on the upland, yonder, we haven't altogether thrown away our ammunition."†   (source)
  • "Ay, but thou forgettest," said the wily adviser, "thou wilt have neither leisure nor opportunity to execute this mad project.†   (source)
  • Moving into the centre of the irritated group, he addressed them with his usual wily logic and plausible manner, at once suppressing the fierce movement that had commenced.†   (source)
  • "It may be a minute, or it may be an hour, afore the wily sarpents steal upon us, and it is quite in natur' for them to be lying within hearing at this very moment," said Hawkeye; "but come they will, and in such a fashion as will leave us nothing to hope!†   (source)
  • Most of the hopes of the party rested on this favorable circumstance, though it was not without its dangers also, as the very obscurity which would favor their escape would be as likely to conceal the movements of their wily enemies.†   (source)
  • As such meetings were rare, and only called on occasions of the last importance, the subtle Huron, who still sat apart, a wily and dark observer of the proceedings, now knew that all his projects must be brought to their final issue.†   (source)
  • The Huron listened to this rebuke with obvious disgust, but he had his ends in view, and was too wily to lose all chance of effecting them by a precipitate avowal of resentment.†   (source)
  • One standing on the ramparts of the fort, and gazing on the waste of glittering water that bounded the view all along the northern horizon, and on the slumbering and seemingly boundless forest which filled the other half of the panorama, would have fancied the spot the very abode of peacefulness and security; but Duncan of Lundie too well knew that the woods might, at any moment, give up their hundreds, bent on the destruction of the fort and all it contained; and that even the treacherous lake offered a highway of easy approach by which his more civilized and scarcely less wily foes, the French, could come upon him at an unguarded moment.†   (source)
  • This explanation was satisfactory, to Albert's great joy; for the wily knight had foreseen the great difficulty, or rather impossibility, of prevailing upon Brian de Bois-Guilbert to take such an oath before the assembly, and had invented this excuse to escape the necessity of his doing so.†   (source)
  • Yet although, in combating his friend's better feelings, he possessed all the advantage which a wily, composed, selfish disposition has over a man agitated by strong and contending passions, it required all Malvoisin's art to keep Bois-Guilbert steady to the purpose he had prevailed on him to adopt.†   (source)
  • The latter could not comprehend the other's motives; he had often heard of his disinterestedness, justice, and truth; and in several instances they had led him into grave errors, on that principle by which a frank and open-mouthed diplomatist is said to keep his secrets better than one that is close-mouthed and wily.†   (source)
  • The habitual and wily flatterer may succeed until his practices recoil on himself, and like other sweets his aliment cloys by its excess; but he who deals honestly, though he often necessarily offends, possesses a power of praising that no quality but sincerity can bestow, since his words go directly to the heart, finding their support in the understanding.†   (source)
  • On the other hand the Huron resumed his seat by the side of his prisoner, the one continuing to ask questions with all the wily ingenuity of a practised Indian counsellor, and the other baffling him by the very means that are known to be the most efficacious in defeating the finesse of the more pretending diplomacy of civilization, or by confining his answers to the truth, and the truth only.†   (source)
  • The meditations of the statesman were here interrupted by the voice of the Prince from an interior apartment, calling out, "Noble Waldemar Fitzurse!" and, with bonnet doffed, the future Chancellor (for to such high preferment did the wily Norman aspire) hastened to receive the orders of the future sovereign.†   (source)
  • I too might ask—I too might enquire—I too might listen with a beating heart to fables which the wily strollers devise to cheat us into hospitality—but no—The son who has disobeyed me is no longer mine; nor will I concern myself more for his fate than for that of the most worthless among the millions that ever shaped the cross on their shoulder, rushed into excess and blood-guiltiness, and called it an accomplishment of the will of God.†   (source)
  • Odysseus, the wily field commander, scowled at him and answered: "Son of Atreus, what is this panic you permit yourself?†   (source)
  • And there he was in great peril, for the giant was a wily fighter, but at last Sir Marhaus smote off his right arm above the elbow.†   (source)
  • And the Red Knight was a wily knight of war, and his wily fighting taught Sir Beaumains to be wise; but he abought it full sore or he did espy his fighting.†   (source)
  • But when he cometh to the strokes of his sword he is then noble and mighty, and that saw Sir Bleoberis and Sir Palomides, for wit ye well they are wily men of arms, and anon they know when they see a young knight by his riding, how they are sure to give him a fall from his horse or a great buffet.†   (source)
  • It is now too late to be saved by wiliness and he has lost the other.†   (source)
  • I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom.†   (source)
  • Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet he retained his wildness and wiliness.†   (source)
  • And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness.†   (source)
  • With a dark glance
    wily Odysseus shot back, "Indecent talk, my friend.†   (source)
  • "Damn wily Scot," I said, laughing despite myself.†   (source)
  • A killing look,
    and the wily old soldier countered, "Out of your mind?†   (source)
  • "She knows by now,
    old man," his wily master answered brusquely.†   (source)
  • "Old woman," wily Odysseus countered,
    "that's what they all say who've seen us both.†   (source)
  • With a dark look, the wily fighter Odysseus shouted back,
    "You dogs!†   (source)
  • "Run, fetch them,"
    the wily captain urged, "while I've got arrows left
    to defend me—or they'll force me from the doors
    while I fight on alone!"†   (source)
  • Some swung their rolling warships hard about—
    Odysseus sailed them back, the flexible, wily king,
    veering over to Agamemnon now to shore his fortunes up.†   (source)
  • The wily one just shook his head,
    silent, his mind churning with thoughts of bloody work ...
    Third to arrive was Philoetius, that good cowherd,
    prodding in for the crowd a heifer and fat goats.†   (source)
  • You terrible man,
    foxy, ingenious, never tired of twists and tricks—
    so, not even here, on native soil, would you give up
    those wily tales that warm the cockles of your heart!†   (source)
  • "True,"
    the wily fighter replied, "how right you are, goddess,
    but still this worry haunts me, heart and soul—
    how can I get these shameless suitors in my clutches?†   (source)
  • And even as they conspired, back the goatherd
    climbed to the room to fetch more burnished arms,
    but Eumaeus spotted him, quickly told his king
    who stood close by: "Odysseus, wily captain,
    there he goes again, the infernal nuisance—
    just as we suspected—back to the storeroom.†   (source)
  • She never forbade me to run with Frankie or Nino or Jerry or Carmen or Joe, but for the longest time she tried by wily arts to break those friendships.†   (source)
  • His questioner perceiving that he was not likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer, fell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the globe, suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed, it covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly what it meant to rule the waves.†   (source)
  • 2
    The sun was low in the west one winter day,
    When down a narrow aisle amid the thieves and outlaws of the land,
    (There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily counterfeiters,
    Gather'd to Sunday church in prison walls, the keepers round,
    Plenteous, well-armed, watching with vigilant eyes,)
    Calmly a lady walk'd holding a little innocent child by either hand,
    Whom seating on their stools beside her on the platform,
    She, first preluding with the instrument a low and musical prelude,
    In voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint old hymn.†   (source)
  • To whom the wily Adder, blithe and glad.†   (source)
  • And there he was in great peril, for the giant was a wily fighter, but at last Sir Marhaus smote off his right arm above the elbow.†   (source)
  • A thousand thoughts at once suggested themselves to him on the subject of this new adventure, and it struck him as being ill done and worse advised in him to expose himself to the danger of breaking his plighted faith to his lady; and said he to himself, "Who knows but that the devil, being wily and cunning, may be trying now to entrap me with a duenna, having failed with empresses, queens, duchesses, marchionesses, and countesses?†   (source)
  • Tartuffe, who uses his dupe to make a buck, Knows a hundred wily ways to pluck this duck; He rakes off great sums with his biblical bull And demands the right to censor us all.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • For nothing art thou ware of the deceit
    Which that this fox y-shapen* hath to thee; *contrived
    His wily wrenches* thou not mayest flee.†   (source)
  • And the Red Knight was a wily knight of war, and his wily fighting taught Sir Beaumains to be wise; but he abought it full sore or he did espy his fighting.†   (source)
  • Him after long debate, irresolute
    Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose
    Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom
    To enter, and his dark suggestions hide
    From sharpest sight: for, in the wily snake
    Whatever sleights, none would suspicious mark,
    As from his wit and native subtlety
    Proceeding; which, in other beasts observed,
    Doubt might beget of diabolick power
    Active within, beyond the sense of brute.†   (source)
  • For by my father's soul, *as to my dome,* *in my judgement*
    Thou art a master when thou art at home;
    No poore cloisterer, nor no novice,
    But a governor, both wily and wise,
    And therewithal, of brawnes* and of bones, *sinews
    A right well-faring person for the nonce.†   (source)
  • But when he cometh to the strokes of his sword he is then noble and mighty, and that saw Sir Bleoberis and Sir Palomides, for wit ye well they are wily men of arms, and anon they know when they see a young knight by his riding, how they are sure to give him a fall from his horse or a great buffet.†   (source)
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