How to Use cunning in a Sentence

cunning

1 of 2 adjective

• She was cunning enough to fool me.
• Had the mountains been less steep or the enemy less cunning?
  — Washington Post, 26 Mar. 2021
• White is a cunning defender with quick feet, crafty hands and a knack for being in the right place at the right time.
  — Jeff McDonald, San Antonio Express-News, 13 Feb. 2021
• Remember the story about a cunning fox and a foolish goat?
  — Robert Krajewski, Forbes, 8 Apr. 2021
• That’s Odysseus—the wiliness, that idea of the cunning trickster.
  — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 26 June 2022
• All at once a seductress and a hag; a cunning shapeshifter and a gullible fool tricked into the service of the devil.
  — Kate Wheeling, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Oct. 2022
• Facebook games have started doing this as well, and in a much more cunning way.
  — James Hetherington, Newsweek, 21 Mar. 2018
• Who is clever and cunning and evil enough to take out the dictator of the Kang Dynasty?
  — Brian Davids, The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Feb. 2023
• It's so far removed that Catherine has to be stoic and cunning and wise all the time.
  — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 11 Sep. 2022
• And there's a side of him which is very cunning and very opportunistic and nimble.
  — CBS News, 7 Dec. 2022
• Mitt Romney in one of the most cunning never- Trump moments.
  — Fox News, 9 June 2018
• The cunning kitty was returned home, and the traveler was able to rebook his cat-free flight for the next day.
  — Laura L. Davis, USA TODAY, 23 Nov. 2022
• Welles certainly looked the part as the knight and troublemaker, but gave him a cunning edge too.
  — CNN, 14 Jan. 2022
• Mesereau made the bizarre decision to cast Constand as a cunning, greedy schemer.
  — Washington Post, 7 Sep. 2021
• The formula for their allure cuts a cunning line between candid and crude.
  — Richard Morgan, New York Times, 21 June 2018
• Other satellites make a cunning use of gravity to estimate the snow and ice mass.
  — Mejs Hasan, WIRED, 13 June 2018
• Icelanders, meanwhile, have found a cunning way to get refunds.
  — The Economist, 12 Sep. 2019
• Her rooms demonstrated a cunning wit and a winning whimsy.
  — Michael Ward, Curbed, 5 Apr. 2018
• Quinn and Patricia haven’t shown the same cunning eye in Detroit.
  — Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press, 20 Mar. 2020
• Deciding on which portable toilet to line up for is a practice of great skill and cunning.
  — Alex Cortez, NOLA.com, 4 Feb. 2021
• First, there’s the cunning brevity of the chapters—a hundred and twenty-nine of them—that makes a long story zip by.
  — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 3 June 2018
• Del Toro plays all of this with a seesaw cunning that keeps the audience agreeably off balance.
  — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 26 Sep. 2023
• Any animal can learn to be cute, but learning to be helpful takes cunning, guile, savvy.
  — Joe Queenan, WSJ, 20 Jan. 2022
• Saturday seemed one of those days that disdains guile, cunning or disguise.
  — Martin Weil, Washington Post, 11 Dec. 2022
• The central characters are stylish, cunning, and painfully hot.
  — Christopher Ros, Glamour, 7 July 2021
• Clare is quiet and cunning, always intent on her own pleasure.
  — Hilton Als, The New Yorker, 22 Feb. 2021
• His techniques have changed as his adversaries have become more cunning.
  — Adam Satariano, New York Times, 9 Feb. 2020
• Drafters this season were patient, cunning, and frugal.
  — Joe Reid, Vulture, 11 Oct. 2023
• Tap into your wilful, cunning side with the help of deep, dark Pluto and use it to your advantage.
  — Jodie Layne, Allure, 9 July 2017
• Everything about this cunning story makes a mockery of its title.
  — Ron Charles, Washington Post, 17 May 2022

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cunning

2 of 2 noun

• He may be a fraud, but you have to admire his cunning.
• After all, who else but Luther has the cunning to catch the guy?
  — Vulture, 21 Dec. 2022
• He could see no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite.
  — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
• Few fish can match the blazing speed of a mako, the sheer power of a great white, or the great cunning of a tiger shark.
  — William McKeever, BostonGlobe.com, 3 July 2019
• But the son was already known for using cunning means to reach saintly ends.
  — Dan Zak, Washington Post, 17 Mar. 2021
• Their luck, joined with their cunning, provides the answer.
  — Tribune News Service, cleveland, 29 Oct. 2019
• These bikes are not public, but private, and they are equipped with cunning locks.
  — The Economist, 16 Dec. 2017
• Most likely: his cunning will win out, at least over Cole.
  — Omar L. Gallaga, Arkansas Online, 1 Nov. 2022
• And, with the cunning that comes from millennia of evolution, the virus exploits all of our most human habits.
  — Anchorage Daily News, 24 Sep. 2020
• Vladimir Putin, the cunning despot and former KGB agent,...
  — Gregg Opelka, WSJ, 7 May 2019
• To go in knowing little or nothing about the play may be the purest way to experience its dramatic cunning.
  — Naveen Kumar, Variety, 17 Apr. 2022
• And knowing the cunning of Taylor Swift, there may be a chance for Alwyn to jump on a track in the future.
  — Natalie Morin, refinery29.com, 24 Aug. 2019
• Maradona was the platonic ideal of a pibe, all virtuoso skill and impetuous cunning.
  — Rory Smith, New York Times, 25 Nov. 2020
• Finally the nobleman, impressed with the rabbi’s cunning, turned to leave.
  — Caren Schnur Neile, Sun Sentinel, 3 Oct. 2022
• Soldiers have always relied on their stomachs as much as their military cunning in times of conquest.
  — Patrik Jonsson, The Christian Science Monitor, 24 Nov. 2021
• This collection of pale-faced swashbucklers moves toward the opposing ship with all the cunning of a hungry zombie.
  — Charlie Theel, Ars Technica, 17 Mar. 2018
• The gameplay rewards cunning and deception with the freedom to pass more than once behind the line of scrimmage and misdirect opponents.
  — Gieson Cacho, Star Tribune, 9 Sep. 2020
• But the book’s seeming impartiality does serve to disguise its cunning.
  — Christopher Hawthorne, The New Yorker, 27 Jan. 2023
• If there were a reliable form of Taste which could be acquired through cash or cunning, someone would have bottled and branded it by now.
  — A-LIST, 2 Oct. 2017
• The conceptual cunning of Rivera Garza’s stories cannot account for the passion that warms them.
  — Merve Emre, The New Yorker, 4 July 2022
• The evil, mocking cunning of this virus is to have rendered all those temples of delight and enlightenment potential death traps.
  — Anastasia Edel, The New York Review of Books, 22 Mar. 2020
• There is immense reward in hauling your own body to the top of a wall using nothing but flexibility, cunning, and the strength of a couple of fingers.
  — Jacqueline Detwiler-George, Popular Mechanics, 16 Mar. 2021
• Yet there is no cunning or malice to Miranda’s approach to The Circle.
  — Ariana Romero, refinery29.com, 3 Jan. 2020
• After just two episodes, Nick has established himself as the coach to watch this season by playing the game with just the right mix of cunning and sincerity.
  — Sabienna Bowman, refinery29.com, 2 Mar. 2020
• Jamie’s reward for his legal cunning is an awkward-as-hell car ride back to the ranch with Beth, which ends in another assault.
  — Josh St. Clair, Men's Health, 27 Nov. 2022
• There are some cunning and unexpected choices in the musical selections as well.
  — Kerry Reid, chicagotribune.com, 8 June 2018
• But snakes also are objects of fascination — for their sly power and a cunning born of a singular evolution.
  — Degen Pener, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Apr. 2023
• Harris’ Duke plays the villainous snob with a degree of cunning that keeps us uncertain of the extent of his depravity.
  — Los Angeles Times, 8 July 2022
• Is there any corroborating evidence—in the language, say—of such cunning?
  — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 10 Oct. 2021
• But the country’s socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, has a cunning plan.
  — The Economist, 21 Sep. 2017

Last Updated: 25 Apr 2024