sly

There is, however, one dazzlingly strange interlude of repressed conflict that radiates such retro 1950s-fixated weirdness that it’s as if David Lynch took a sly pass at the “Mad Max” universe.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 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

The young fox ambled along the dusty road to Redwall, the hedgerows echoing with the sound of his sly chuckles.

From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques

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 D. Laing Purves

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

And in one of the film’s slyer jokes, the hip-hop song “White Boy Summer” by their son Chet Hanks is used to personify a certain kind of clueless obliviousness in others.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 28, 2022

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

Mr. Payton took a slyer approach, employing strategies of escalation.

From New York Times ● Dec. 15, 2011

So it’s interesting, and more than a little disturbing, to see how Barb turned out—that she’s meaner and slyer than I am, more cherishing of grudges, and not quite as smart as I’d hoped.

From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich

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

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

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

"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 Samuel Warren

Their testimony represents the movie’s slyest joke and its most revealing fantasy.

From New York Times ● Jun. 2, 2016

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

These jokes expired about the time Twitter’s co-founders taught Oprah how to tweet on the air in 2009, and yet here they are, on one of the slyest shows on television in 2013.

From Slate ● Feb. 8, 2013

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 Lee Wilson Dodd