1 (disapproving) acting or done in a secret or dishonest way, often intending to trick people
SYNCUNNING:
a sly political move * (humorous) You sly old devil! How long have you known?
2 [usuallybeforenoun] suggesting that you know sth secret that other people do not know
SYNKNOWING:
a sly smile / grin / look / glance
slyly adverb:
He glanced at her slyly.
slyness noun [U]
IDIOMS
on the sly secretly; not wanting other people to discover what you are doing:
He has to visit them on the sly.
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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 sly is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is sly a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, sly is tagged as adjective.
Does sly appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — sly 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.
