1 (disapproving) able to get what you want in a clever way, especially by tricking or deceiving sb:
a cunning liar * He was as cunning as a fox.
2 clever and skilful:
It was a cunning piece of detective work.
cunningly adverb:
The microphone was cunningly concealed in the bookcase.
noun [U] the ability to achieve sth by tricking or deceiving other people in a clever way:
It took energy and cunning just to survive. * She used low cunning (= dishonest behaviour) to get what she wanted.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for cunning is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is cunning a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, cunning is tagged as adjective.
Does cunning appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — cunning appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
