Word.ws English Dictionary

sly

/slaɪ/

sly adjective: artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily.

Adjective

sly (comparative slier or slyer, superlative sliest or slyest)

  1. Artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily.
  2. (having a positive connotation) Dexterous in performing an action, so as to escape notice
  3. Done with, and marked by, artful and dexterous secrecy; subtle
    • a sly trick
  4. Light or delicate; slight; thin.

Adverb

sly

  1. Slyly.

Proper noun capitalized: Sly

Sly

  1. A diminutive of the male given name Sylvester.
  2. A surname

sly meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu

sly in Tamil

சூழ்ச்சி வாய்ந்த, வஞ்சகமென

sly in Urdu

a sly or cunning individual
چالاک cālāk

sly in Bengali

ধূর্ত, চতুর, লুকানো

sly in Telugu

sly or cunning expression
జునుగుమాట junugumāṭa
sly
దొంగ doṅga
More languagesFewer languages
sly in Malayalam
കാപട്യമുള്ള, കൈയടക്കമുള്ള, കുസൃതിക്കാരിയായ, തന്ത്രമായ
sly in Kannada
ಮೋಸದ, ಕೃತ್ರಿಮದ, ಕುಹಕದ, ಕಪಟವಾದ
sly in Sanskrit
धूर्त dhūrta
sly in Nepali
स्लाई
sly in Arabic
خَبِيث ḵabīṯ, مَاكِر mākir

Examples of sly in a sentence

  • Shakespeare's use of the word scut may be a sly reference to Mistress Ford's pudenda: see sense 3.
  • The sly reveal has kicked off a theorycrafting love triangle reminiscent of Final Fantasy 7’s Clerith vs.
  • His writing about the shattering nature of syphilis is both devastating and a bit sly.

All 35 example sentences with sly

Synonyms of sly

3 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of sly

Forms of sly

comparativeslier
comparativeslyer
superlativesliest
superlativeslyest
alternative form (obsolete)sligh

Origin of sly

From Middle English sly, sley, sleigh, sleiȝ, from Old Norse slǿgr (“sly, cunning”, literally “capable of hitting or striking”), from Proto-Germanic *slōgiz (“lively, agile, cunning, sly, striking”), from Proto-Indo-European *slak- (“to hit, throw”). Cognate with Icelandic slægur (“crafty, sly”), Norwegian Nynorsk sløg (“sly”). Related to sleight, slay. In all likelihood, however, unrelated with Saterland Frisian slau (“sly, crafty”), Dutch sluw (“sly, cunning”), Low German slu (“sly, cunning”), German schlau (“clever, crafty”). Doublet of sleight and slöjd

Words formed from sly

Phrases with sly

Words that rhyme with sly

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sly

What does sly mean?
Sly means artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily.
What is sly in Tamil?
Sly in Tamil is சூழ்ச்சி வாய்ந்த, வஞ்சகமென. See Sly meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is sly?
Sly can be an adjective, an adverb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce sly?
Sly is pronounced /slaɪ/.

Words near sly in the dictionary

  1. slutwhore
  2. slutwhores
  3. slv
  4. slvs
  5. SLW
  6. sly
  7. sly as a fox
  8. sly dog
  9. sly dogs
  10. sly fox
  11. sly foxes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sly (page history and authors); Sly (page history and authors); sly (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); چالاک (Urdu) (page history and authors); sly (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); జునుగుమాట (Telugu) (page history and authors); sly (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sly (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sly (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sly.wav.

Cite this entry: “sly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.