All 10 Uses
cunning
in
Alias Grace
(Auto-generated)
- Her eyes are a bright blue, her hair auburn, and her face would be rather handsome were it not for the long curved chin, which gives, as it always does to most persons who have this facial defect, a cunning, cruel expression.†
Chpt 3cunning = good at achieving goals through cleverness and deception
- to know how to act and that to hang me would be judicial murder, that I am fond of animals, that I am very handsome with a brilliant complexion, that I have blue eyes, that I have green eyes, that I have auburn and also brown hair, that I am tall and also not above the average height, that I am well and decently dressed, that I robbed a dead woman to appear so, that I am brisk and smart about my work, that I am of a sullen disposition with a quarrelsome temper, that I have the appearance of a person rather above my humble station, that I am a good girl with a pliable nature and no harm is told of me, that I am cunning and devious, that I am soft in the head and little better than an idiot.†
Chpt 3
- Sullen, brutish, vengeful; a mind that exists at a sub-rational level, yet cunning, slippery and evasive.†
Chpt 4
- in the fenced yards, their tassels, their flowers like pale yellow-green caterpillars dangling, and the dogs barking and the carriages and wagons passing, splashing through the water in the road, and the people staring because it's obvious where we have come from, they can tell by my clothing, until we go up the long drive with herbaceous borders and around to the servants' entrance, and Here she is all safe and sound, she tried to escape didn't you Grace, tried to give us the slip, she's a cunning one for all her big blue eyes, well better luck next time my girl, you should've hitched up your petticoats higher and shown a clean pair of heels and some ankle while you was at it, says the one.†
Chpt 4
- And how cunningly spirit and body are knit together.†
Chpt 7cunningly = in a manner that is clever and typically that includes tricking others
- Right you are, said the other, and at last the cunning fellow tried to climb into Heaven, and ended by making such a high leap into the air that he stayed up there for two hours, and could not be made to come down of his own accord, no matter how they called, but had to be fetched.†
Chpt 8cunning = good at achieving goals through cleverness and deception
- Is it a real case of amnesia, of the somnambulistic type, or is he the victim of a cunning imposture?†
Chpt 9 *
- Somewhere within herself — he's seen it, if only for a moment, that conscious, even cunning look in the corner of her eye — she knows she's concealing something from him.†
Chpt 11
- But I didn't have the cunning to think of it at the time.†
Chpt 12
- I am disappointed in Dr. Jordan; I had some previous correspondence with him, in which I warned him explicitly against this cunning woman.†
Chpt 14
Definitions:
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(1)
(cunning as in: a cunning thief) being good at achieving goals through cleverness -- and typically through deception as well (tricking others)
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) At one time, cunning was also used as a synonym for cute.