All 21 Uses of

wary

in

Underworld, by DeLillo

And photographers edging near and taking their spread stances and the first of the fans appearing on the field, the first strays standing wary or whirling about to see things from this perspective, astonished to find themselves at field level, or running right at Thomson all floppy and demented, milling into the wedge of players at home plate.†

wary = careful, nervous, or distrustful

She was saying I looked well but she was staring in a certain way and there was something in her voice, you see, that made me wary.†

Or I do want to disarm the world but I want it to be done warily and realistically and in the full knowledge of what we're giving up.†

warily = in a nervous or distrustful manner

But something made me wary.
*

wary = careful or untrusting of someone or something

He walked west across Arthur Avenue and then edged warily north, an old route lately forsworn, toward the high school where he'd taught for thirty years.†

warily = in a nervous or distrustful manner

City workers came periodically to excavate the site and they stood warily by the great earth machines, the pumpkin-mudded backhoes and dozers, like infantrymen huddled near advancing tanks.†

Richard paused, wary about how to take this, peering inwardly ahead for a setup, a possible remark.†

wary = careful, nervous, or distrustful

Something in her skin began its anxious leap, some need to handle and shape, only deeper really—some need so whole she could sit alone in the loft and be a little wary of it.†

She had a way of seeing herself, a wariness about things that didn't feel right.†

wariness = caution or distrust

Albert used to tell her in his slightly didactic way that the Italians of his experience, his Harlem and Bronx upbringing, his Calabrian heritage, tended to be wary of certain kinds of accomplishment, as immigrants, people who needed protection against the cold hand of the culture, who needed sons and daughters and sisters and others because who else could they trust with their broken English, their ten thousand uprooted tales, and he came home one day, the thirteen-year-old son, and saw his parents huddle†

wary = careful, nervous, or distrustful

There were people already there and others started arriving and there was a pungent trail in the air, the root aroma of marijuana rolled and toked communally, and a sense of some event not unlike the showing of a midnight film, only not SO loose a group—a little beady-eyed, these people, wary of their own anticipation.†

Charlie smiled thinly, wary of the new wave of civil rights jokes, and raised his head to indicate, What?†

She had a ritual thing she did, a reflex, not coy but wary and foxy, pulling away from me the more she showed a need, dancing away, eyes bright, her shoulder rounding against my approach.†

A contingent of Cubans fell by, headed for the hotel lounge, shod, clad, tropically smart—the women in wraparound white and born to dance and the men sunglassed and wary They looked like bodyguards for some jefe about to topple.†

He was defensive and a little angry and about halfway drunk, gripped by the plan and a little angry in advance, wary of the thought that I might not see the beauty and inevitability of a trip to the Bronx, that I might be unswayed by the power of old-times'—sake, and he was already sensing the edges of a bitter affront.†

But he wasn't completely unwary.†

unwary = not careful about possible danger or deception

standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unwary means not and reverses the meaning of wary. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.

Nick felt a little wary of George since the episode of the needle.†

wary = careful, nervous, or distrustful

But he was also wary of it, he was hesitant, he wanted to say something unsolemn because anything about his father made him apprehensive.†

She admires the graffiti wall, the angels arrayed row after row, blue for boys, pink for girls, but she is wary of the man who runs the project and she tries to understand the disappointment she feels, seeing Ismael in good spirits and evidently healthy.†

Definition:

careful or nervous about something