Adjective
a canny card player, good at psyching out his opponents
warm and canny under the woolen bedcovers, we didn't mind the chilly Scottish nights
Recent Examples on the Web
Adjective
When her father dies, Alexandra Bergson is entrusted with the family farm and soon becomes prosperous, thanks to some canny risk-taking and her near-mystical identification with the land.—Chelsea Leu, The Atlantic, 3 Apr. 2024 The rare artist who can pull off such a canny move, Beyoncé now represents something bigger than music.—Jason Parham, WIRED, 29 Mar. 2024 There’s no truer visual metaphor for this than Sen’s canny choice of town to play his fictional Limbo: real-life Aussie settlement Coober Pedy, where most homes and businesses are subterranean, built right into the region’s sandstone, as if cave times had returned.—Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, 21 Mar. 2024 His upbeat demeanor and canny knowledge of the inside game of growing a company has benefited hundreds of startups.—Steven Levy, WIRED, 15 Mar. 2024 Celebrities, like memoirists, are becoming more and more canny about feeding their personal life directly to the public.—Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 13 Mar. 2024 My favorite is about the two best friends who started the La Mancha development company, one of the biggest and canniest of the mini-mall builders.—Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, 20 Jan. 2024 Yeoh is satisfyingly mercenary and chilling as Ms. Reynolds, toeing the line between canny businesswoman and purveyor of spiritualism in a way that keeps us guessing.—Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 9 Sep. 2023 Robot makers of any era would have loved to plug a canny, practical brain into robot bodies.—David Berreby, Scientific American, 20 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'canny.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
Adjective
originally Scots & regional northern English, going back to early Scots, "free from risk, sagacious, prudent, cautious," probably from can "ability" (noun derivative of cancan entry 1) + -y-y entry 1
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