All 6 Uses of
cunning
in
The Mill on the Floss
- How to keep her in a clean pinafore two hours together passes my cunning.†
Chpt 1.2cunning = good at achieving goals through cleverness and deception
- But that same Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies.†
Chpt 1.5 *
- He had a vague notion that the deformity of Wakem's son had some relation to the lawyer's rascality, of which he had so often heard his father talk with hot emphasis; and he felt, too, a half-admitted fear of him as probably a spiteful fellow, who, not being able to fight you, had cunning ways of doing you a mischief by the sly.†
Chpt 2.3
- And in the Odyssey—that's a beautiful poem—there's a more wonderful giant than Goliath,—Polypheme, who had only one eye in the middle of his forehead; and Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise and cunning, got a red-hot pine-tree and stuck it into this one eye, and made him roar like a thousand bulls.†
Chpt 2.3
- "But it is really odd that you should have hit so exactly on Maggie's appearance and manners," said the cunning Lucy, moving to reach her desk, "because she might have been like her brother, you know; and Tom has not round eyes; and he is as far as possible from staring at people."†
Chpt 6.1
- On this last point Lucy had her cunning projects, and when she and Maggie had made their dangerous way down the bright stairs into the handsome parlor, where the very sunbeams seemed cleaner than elsewhere, she directed her manoeuvres, as any other great tactician would have done, against the weaker side of the enemy.†
Chpt 6.12
Definitions:
-
(1)
(cunning as in: a cunning thief) being good at achieving goals through cleverness -- and typically through deception as well (tricking others)
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
At one time, cunning was also used as a synonym for cute.