sly

Mr. Corrigan not only directs with verve, but he and his co-writer Hope Elliott Kemp also find sly ways to say things without saying them.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026

You have to be clever, not sly, in how you deal with it.

From BBC ● May 8, 2026

“The long and winding road is more than a song,” he sings, with a sly wink to his Beatles past.

From Salon ● Apr. 24, 2026

I saw his pale skin turned purple, his sly mouth gone flat.

From Slate ● Apr. 23, 2026

“They weren’t courtin’ on the sly or anything like that.

From "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns

But I began to suspect he was up to something slier in the course of this 800-plus-page doorstopper.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2021

Julia understands digital media—and print media, for that matter—as well as anyone I’ve ever met, and every day she made the Slate we were editing together slier and fresher and more fun.

From Slate ● Oct. 26, 2018

It’s only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood

He had a Sompnour ready to his hand, A slier boy was none in Engleland; For subtlely he had his espiaille,* *espionage That taught him well where it might aught avail.

From The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems by Purves, D. Laing

The hungry thousands that crowded and pushed at Willard's thought him one of them, only deeper and slier.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861 by Various

Considering the series’ tone and genre, one may expect the conversion to shift into the age-old “Die Hard” debate – but series creator Joe Barton is slyer than that.

From Salon ● Dec. 7, 2024

One of the slyer jokes in “No Sudden Move,” Steven Soderbergh’s smart, insouciantly twisty thriller set in 1954 Detroit, is how little some of its characters know about cars.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2021

And other late-night hosts also frankly and straightforwardly used the word on Monday, which was refreshing—though some were slyer about its usage than others.

From Slate ● Jul. 30, 2019

But given their lines, it’s impossible for them not to register as grotesquely obtuse variations on the limousine-liberal guilt junkies from the slyer, fuller plays of Wallace Shawn.

From New York Times ● Oct. 15, 2018

He laughs again, and the nasty laugh admits I’m slyer than he guessed.

From "Grendel" by John Gardner

One of the last performances I saw in 2017 was one of the sliest: Billy Crudup in David Cale’s “Harry Clarke” at New York’s Vineyard Theatre.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 16, 2018

"Will my learned friend," said Mr. P —— with one of his sliest sneers, "inform us what motive the defendant could possibly have to keep back a witness so necessary to him?"

From The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney by Warren, Samuel

The sliest old thief that you ever did see; Hi, ho, see the chips fly!

From The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum by Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo)

Where The White Lotus ends up, is, in some ways, the slyest joke of all.

From Slate ● Jul. 12, 2021

It is the play’s slyest and richest joke that it takes a commoner, with great hair and a keen sartorial sense, to explain what royalty means today.

From New York Times ● Jan. 28, 2015

Peter Debruge in Variety noted "of all the satirists working in cinema today, Östlund displays perhaps the slyest streak of dark humor."

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2014

Where the network’s “True Detective” occasionally broke its dolefulness with the slyest, philosophically artful wink at an audience riveted by its mystery, “The Leftovers” grafts more unhappiness onto unhappiness.

From Washington Post

Once found that spring she never spoke of it; she hoarded her treasure, slipping off to it stealthily, through slyest subterfuge or evasion, whenever she could.

From The Book of Susan A Novel by Dodd, Lee Wilson