Search the Dictionary

Cunning, art, or skill, in a bad sense, or applied to bad purposes; artifice; guile; skill or dexterity employed to effect purposes by deceit or shrewd devices. You have that crooked wisdom which is called craft. Hobbes. The chief priets and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death. Mar…

With craft; artfully; cunningly.

Dexterity in devising and effecting a purpose; cunning; artifice; stratagem. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. Job. v. 13.

Without craft or cunning. Helpless, craftless, and innocent people. Jer. Taylor.

One skilled in his craft or trade; one of superior cunning. In cunning persuasion his craftsmaster. Holland.

Skillful at deceiving others; characterized by craft; cunning; wily. "A pair of crafty knaves." Shak. With anxious care and crafty wiles. J. Baillie.

n of, or general confidence in, the ability or readiness of a government to fulfull its pecuniary engagements. (b) The ability and fidelity of merchants or others who owe largely in a community. He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet. D. Webster.

by creeping slowly; in the manner of a reptile; insidiously; cunningly. How slily and creepingly did he address himself to our first parents. South.

s, a creviced structure for storing ears of corn. Trickling through the creviced rock. J. Cunningham.

mong cultured people, is less often met with than other mental endowments. I. Taylor. The cunning hand and cultured brain. Whittier.

Clever; sharp; shrewd; ingenious; cunning. [Colloq.]

Acuteness; cunning. [Colloq.]

A cunette. 3. (Spectrometry) (Analytical chemistry)

Cunningly or ingeniously formed or working; skillful; artistic; ingenious. Our bodies decked in our dædalian arms. Chapman. The dædal hand of Nature. J. Philips. The doth the dædal earth throw forth to thee, Out of her fruitful, abundant flowers. Spenser.

Extremely. [Obs.] "Deadly weary." Orrery. "So deadly cunning a man." Arbuthnot.

Of penetrating or far-reaching intellect; not superficial; thoroughly skilled; sagacious; cunning. Deep clerks she dumbs. Shak.

Laid deeply; formed with cunning and sagacity; as, deep-laid plans.

s. Udall. Sometimes she dejects her eyes in a seeming civility; and many mistake in her a cunning for a modest look. Fuller.

f the Queen [of George II.], in 1737, they [drawing-rooms] were held but twice a week. P. Cunningham.

The faculty of multiplying in two ways; -- by ova fecundated by spermatic fluid, and asexually, as by buds. See Parthenogenesis.