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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
wily
adjective
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
wise/wily/funny/weird etc old bird
▪ I hadn't noticed what a weird old bird Ned was, either.
▪ Just so. Funny old bird.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a wily businessman
▪ Breen had a reputation for being a tough and wily negotiator.
▪ The Fawcett brothers were too wily to be caught, and the local residents could get no help from the law.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ All these benefits were acquired by a wily diplomacy.
▪ But Rose knew that wily Grandpa had quietly saved enough cloth to make a few high quality, black market clothes.
▪ Even then his response was wily.
▪ It had grown old and wily.
▪ The archetypal survivor is the trickster, and his strategy is wily cunning.
▪ The idea of the touring professional as wily entrepreneur was nearly dead.
▪ The Ingushetians have been more patient and wily than their hotheaded Chechen neighbors.
▪ There is Achilles, the fearless hothead; the courageous and disciplined Hector; and the wily, imaginative Odysseus.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Wily

Wily \Wil"y\, a. [Compar. Wilier; superl. Wiliest.] [From Wile.] Full of wiles, tricks, or stratagems; using craft or stratagem to accomplish a purpose; mischievously artful; subtle. ``Wily and wise.''
--Chaucer. ``The wily snake.''
--Milton.

This false, wily, doubling disposition of mind.
--South.

Syn: Cunning; artful; sly; crafty. See Cunning.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
wily

"subtle, cunning, crafty," early 14c., from wile (n.) + -ly (1). Related: Wiliness. In 16c. English had wily-pie "cunning fellow."

Wiktionary
wily

a. sly, cunning, full of tricks

WordNet
wily
  1. adj. marked by skill in deception; "cunning men often pass for wise"; "deep political machinations"; "a foxy scheme"; "a slick evasive answer"; "sly as a fox"; "tricky Dik"; "a wily old attorney" [syn: crafty, cunning, dodgy, foxy, guileful, knavish, slick, sly, tricksy, tricky]

  2. [also: wiliest, wilier]

Wikipedia
WILY

WILY (1210 AM, "The Big 1210") is an American radio station licensed to serve the community of Centralia, Illinois. The station is owned by Dana Withers' Withers Broadcasting Companies, and its broadcast license is held by WRXX, LLC. The station, established in 1946 as "WCNT", was assigned the call sign "WILY" by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1967.

Wily (disambiguation)

Wily or WILY could refer to:

  • Wily, a text editor for Unix computer systems
  • WILY, a radio station (1210 AM) licensed to Centralia, Illinois, United States
  • Doctor Wily, a video game character
  • WWNL, a radio station (1080 AM) licensed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, known as WILY 1947 to 1957
  • Ubuntu 15.10, the version of Ubuntu released in October 2015 with code name Wily Werewolf

Usage examples of "wily".

The Culture - the real Culture, the wily ones, not these semi-mystical Elenchers with their miserable hankering to be somebody else - had been known to give whole Affronter fleets the run-around for several months with not dissimilar enticements and subterfuges, keeping them occupied, seemingly on the track of some wildly promising prey which turned out to be nothing at all, or a Culture ship with some ridiculous but earnestly argued excuse, while the Culture or one of its snivelling client species got on - or away - with something else somewhere else, spoiling rightful Affronter fun.

The wily Beduin knew the purpose of that portcullis and he was trying to plan best how he might enter the enclosure beyond before it could be dropped before his face.

For the thousandth time, he wished Bowser were still here, wily and unpredictable and fiercely unwilling to surrender.

The chances were even that the wily old killer would sell him to the constables the first chance he got if he thought he could somehow avoid being confronted with his own malefactions, but Kaspar had to take risks at this point.

When they could, they downed wily pronghorn antelope, skinny mule deer, and shaggy wild horses.

Jesse was one of the few who had called attention to the imbalance, and finally, eyeing the wealth reaped by the wily Hoskanners, the other nobles agitated for a piece of the action.

Turk had been employed as a waiter aboard his showboat, the wily Turner had visited the morgue and identified the drowned girl as his missing dancer.

Trying to disarm wily Senator Stillworth was unthinkable, not to mention his four armed cronies.

Marion is proverbially the great master of strategy -- the wily fox of the swamps -- never to be caught, never to be followed, -- yet always at hand, with unconjectured promptness, at the moment when he is least feared and is least to be expected.

Although his wrists, like ours, were bound behind his back, the wily and cunning former Grand Vizier of Kor maintained an unruled demeanor.

Elders, if men had Elders, and if the Colonial Coalition had any sense at all, they would be as wily and problematic as anyone in the New Amazonian Parliament.

Jack Shannon, his wily roommate, had spent their nights at barrelhouse piano saloons on the South Side, listening to musicians with names like Pine Top Smith, Cripple Clarence Lofton, Speckled Red, and Cow Cow Davenport pound the keys on their uprights.

But when Abu Batn was near, Ibn Dammuk ignored the fair prisoner, and this caused Zora the most apprehension, for it convinced her that the wily Ibn was but biding his time until he might find conditions favorable to the carrying out of some scheme that he already had decided upon, nor did Zora harbor any doubts as to the general purpose of his plan.

Practically the entire passenger list had been composed of crooks employed by the wily Birmingham Jones.

And when the Bretwalda leapt through the flame-curtain, his loathsome axe high in the air, the wily Arthur dodged aside, leaving only the sharp edge of his sword behind.