CRAFTY (craftier, craftiest)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected forms: craftier    , craftiest   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does crafty mean? 

• CRAFTY (adjective)
  The adjective CRAFTY has 1 sense:

1. marked by skill in deception

  Familiarity information: CRAFTY used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CRAFTY (adjective)

Comparative: craftier   
Superlative: craftiest   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Marked by skill in deception

Synonyms:

crafty; cunning; dodgy; foxy; guileful; knavish; slick; sly; tricksy; tricky; wily

Context example:

a wily old attorney

Similar:

artful (marked by skill in achieving a desired end especially with cunning or craft)

Derivation:

craft; craftiness (shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception)

 Context examples 

It was an odious face—crafty, vicious, malignant, with shifty, light-grey eyes and white lashes.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A crafty idea came to him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The gnat, who was the most crafty, flew into the forest where the enemy was assembled, and hid herself beneath a leaf of the tree where the password was to be announced.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

“It’s the bloody mate!” was Leach’s crafty answer, strained from him in a smothered sort of way.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

So, on his next trip, Bim and Bawn, two young men, and of hunters the craftiest, followed after him, taking care not to be seen.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

He became quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and more intelligent.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I recollect well how indignantly my heart beat, as I saw his crafty face, with the appropriately red light of the fire upon it, preparing for something else.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In his new book launched today (November 26) titled Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood story, he explores the tricks of ‘wily Ea’, who is also known as the ‘crafty god’ and the ‘trickster god’.

(‘Trickster god’ used fake news in Babylonian Noah story, University of Cambridge)

His face was thin and brown and crafty, with a perpetual smile upon it, which showed an irregular line of yellow teeth, and his crinkled hands were half closed in a way that is distinctive of sailors.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They are all stupid when they are not crafty, and very few of them are crafty.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)