Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use crafty in a sentence

20 example sentences · adjective

Crafty means skillful at deceiving others. Example: “I took a crafty look at his hand of cards while he was out of the room.”

Examples of crafty by meaning

adjectiveSkillful at deceiving others.

  • According to The State and Revolution, only an ignoramus or a crafty bourgeois could suggest that the workers are incapable of directly and collectively managing industry, the state, and the administration.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon...
  • Los Angeles would still be a piddling little town in a desert if it weren’t for Sierra snowmelt and city officials crafty enough to snooker eastern California farmers out of their water rights.2023 August 6, Daniel Duane, “It’s August. Californians Are Still Skiing. Don’t Ask.”, in The New York Times

adjectiveSneaky; surreptitious.

  • I took a crafty look at his hand of cards while he was out of the room.

adjectiveRelating to, or characterized by, craft or skill; dexterous, clever.

  • It could soon be reality in even the most tech-averse household, and it might just end up saving the craftier among us lots of time and money.2013 September 3, Brit Morin, “13 ways to decorate with 3-D style”, in CNN
  • The lightning committee devised a crafty plan, based on Cavendish’s prescient theories of electricity, to surround a warehouse with metal rods, tipped with copper conductors, to draw impertinent discharges away from the unstable powder.2015, Steve Silberman, chapter 1, in Megan Newman, editor, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, New York...

adjectiveMagical or occult, or allegedly so.

  • a crafty science

More sentences with crafty

  • Little did anyone suspect that the military attaché was one of the world's craftiest spies.From the entry attaché
  • A crafty man-of-the-world keeps his finger to the wind.From the entry finger to the wind
  • Isaiah Thomas is very clever, very crafty getting to the paint and finishing in the paint.2016 April 20, “Hawks not giving Celtics anything in the paint”, in Comcast SportsNet New England. From the entry paint
  • And whatever reason you gave him, no matter how crafty, he'd take offence at it.2014, Karen Miller, The Falcon Throne. From the entry pricklesome
  • Hmmm somehow I manage to sidetrack from Arjuna's crafty strategy to the ICC management of cricket grounds?1998 June 13, Duane Pettet, “NZ vs Sri Lanka (result)”, in rec.sport.cricket (Usenet), archived from the original on 26 Nov 2024. From the entry wafflyness
  • They are all stupid when they are not crafty, and very few of them are crafty.1908 September – 1909 September, Jack London, chapter XXIX, in Martin Eden, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published September…. From the entry millionnaire
  • They gave him, those eyes, the look of being always meanly at work on some extended, crafty and unbenign calculation.2008 March 16, Benjamin Black, “The Lemur”, in New York Times. From the entry unbenign
  • Pulling your trenchcoat up around your bumfluffed cheeks and sneaking past the bouncers for a crafty pint of Best on Deansgate.2008 -, Stuart Maconie, Pies and Prejudice: In search of the North, →ISBN, page 100. From the entry bumfluffed
  • She pictured him as a crafty adventurer, a wretched fortune-hunter.1916, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 5, in Uneasy Money. From the entry fortune-hunter
  • The unicorn stamped and gave him a scornful look as Sally cycloned away from them, but Wulfric laughed to himself a crafty laugh.2020, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Songs From the Seashell Archives. From the entry cyclone
  • Running a crafty biz means being a Jill of all trades, and you have to be a real self-starter (if you'll pardon the business jargon).2009, Grace Dobush, Crafty Superstar: Make Crafts on the Side, Earn Extra Cash, and Basically Have It All, North Light Books, →ISBN, page 20. From the entry jill of all trades
  • But originality in war does, and slave- owning nations, having time to think, are likely to be more shrewd in policy, and more crafty in strategy.2010, Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics, →ISBN, page 73. From the entry after-cost
  • At the same time, Nolan also secretly contracted with the crafty United States Army general James Wilkinson to organize some men to secede Texas from Spanish America.2002, Darryl E. Brock, “José Agustín Quintero: Cuban Patriot in Confederate Diplomatic Service”, in Cubans in the Confederacy: José…. From the entry secede
  • DM are buzzing with life, throwing their stadium-swelling audience a few crafty curveballs in between the mammoth stomach-flipping genius of Enjoy the Silence and the pervalicious perfection of Personal Jesus.2017 November 15, Jennifer Gannon, “Depeche Mode at 3Arena: Everything you need to know”, in The Irish Times. From the entry pervalicious

Meaning of crafty

  1. adjective Skillful at deceiving others.
  2. adjective Sneaky; surreptitious.
  3. adjective Relating to, or characterized by, craft or skill; dexterous, clever.

Full definition of crafty

Questions about crafty in a sentence

How do you use crafty in a sentence?
Crafty is used as an adjective. For example: “I took a crafty look at his hand of cards while he was out of the room.”
What is a short sentence with crafty?
“a crafty science”
What does crafty mean?
Crafty means skillful at deceiving others.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crafty (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use crafty in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/crafty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.