tricksy
Syllables: trick·sy/ˈtɹɪksiː/
tricksy adjective: inclined to trickery; sneaky, devious.
Adjective
tricksy (comparative tricksier, superlative tricksiest)
- Inclined to trickery; sneaky, devious.
- My trickſey Spirit.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
- There will succeed, therefore, in my opinion, and that too within no long time, to the rudeness and rusticity of our age, that ensnaring meretricious popularness in literature, with all the tricksy humilities of the ambitious candidates for the favourable suffrages of the judicious public, which if...1809, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend
- Synonyms:
- mischievous
Examples of tricksy in a sentence
- As an experienced editor I disapprove of backflashes, foreshadowings and tricksy devices […]2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, London: Sceptre (Hodder and Stoughton), →ISBN:
- This may seem tricksy in a way we’ve seen many times before.2015 January 14, Catherine O'Flynn, “10:04 by Ben Lerner review”, in The Guardian:
- You're trying to smoke me out, you tricksy little bitches.2023 July 20, Jake Bender & Zach Dunn, “Pride Parade” (19:25 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 5, episode 3, spoken by...
- And that is exactly what he did: marrying tricksy European post-modernism with hard-boiled American noir, to create something dizzyingly inventive and new.2024 May 1, Lisa Allardice, “Brooklyn’s bard: Paul Auster’s tricksy fiction captivated a generation”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
Synonyms of tricksy
Forms of tricksy
| comparative | tricksier |
|---|---|
| superlative | tricksiest |
Origin of tricksy
From tricks + -y.
Words formed from tricksy
Words that rhyme with tricksy
Questions about tricksy
- What does tricksy mean?
- Tricksy means inclined to trickery; sneaky, devious.
- How do you use tricksy in a sentence?
- As an experienced editor I disapprove of backflashes, foreshadowings and tricksy devices […]
- What part of speech is tricksy?
- Tricksy is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce tricksy?
- Tricksy is pronounced /ˈtɹɪksiː/.
Words near tricksy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tricksy (page history and authors). 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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “tricksy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tricksy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.