sly

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Mr. Polito thereby gives us a poet who isn’t “just a blazing, mercurial, ingenious reviser of his own words and melodies but also a conscious, sly, artist.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 6, 2026

She has a sly way of imparting lessons, often with playfulness.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 14, 2026

"Nobody had agreed to it at all. Really sly," fellow chorister Kevin Doughty says in Con Jones: World's Best Conman.

From BBC • Dec. 31, 2025

Here, it is a man whose labor disappears behind a woman’s byline, a sly inversion of the far more familiar historical pattern.

From Salon • Dec. 25, 2025

She thought of the photograph at the art museum, which now, in her memory, took on a secretive, sly tinge.

From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng