beguiling

beguiling

adjective

Definition of BEGUILING

1

clever at attaining one's ends by indirect and often deceptive means <a smart and beguiling child who can manipulate her parents with alarming ease>

Synonyms beguiling, cagey (also cagy), crafty, cunning, cute, designing, devious, dodgy [chiefly British], foxy, guileful, scheming, shrewd, slick, sly, subtle, tricky, wily

Related Words astute, facile, glib, sharp; crooked, deceitful, deceptive, dishonest, fraudulent, insinuating, knavish, Machiavellian, oblique, serpentine, shady, shifty, slippery, sneaky, treacherous, underhand, underhanded, unscrupulous; backhanded, double-dealing, hypocritical, insincere, left-handed, mealy, mealymouthed, smooth-tongued, two-faced; circuitous, circular, roundabout; clandestine, concealed, covert, furtive, hugger-mugger, secret, stealthy, surreptitious, undercover; calculating, plotting

Near Antonyms obvious, open, patent, plain, public, unconcealed; aboveboard, candid, direct, forthright, frank, honest, natural, outspoken, plainspoken, real, simple, sincere, straightforward, unaffected, unpretending, unpretentious, unvarnished; childlike, impressionable, simpleminded, unsophisticated, unworldly; unforced, unstudied; trustful, trusting

Antonyms artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, undesigning

2

tending or having power to deceive <the beguiling allure of a life of crime>

Synonyms beguiling, deceitful, deceiving, deluding, delusive, delusory, fallacious, false, misleading, specious

Related Words artful, crafty, cunning, devious, foxy, guileful, shady, shifty, slick, sly, sneaking, sneaky, subtile, subtle, trick, trickish, tricky, underhand, underhanded, wily; inaccurate, incorrect, wrong; bewildering, confounding, distracting, perplexing, puzzling; ambidextrous, crooked, defrauding, dishonest, dissembling, double-dealing, duplicitous, faithless, fast, fraudulent, knavish, lying, mendacious, untrustworthy, untruthful; bogus, counterfeit, fake, feigned, forged, jive [slang], phony (also phoney), sham, spurious; insidious, perfidious, treacherous; ambiguous, circuitous, equivocal, evasive; artificial, backhanded, hypocritical, insincere, left-handed, two-faced

Near Antonyms candid, direct, foursquare, frank, free-spoken, open, openhearted, outspoken, plain, plainspoken, straight; clarifying, elucidative, explanatory, illuminating; revealing, revelatory; honest, trustworthy, truthful

Antonyms aboveboard, forthright, nondeceptive, straightforward