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 artful, cagey (also cagy), crafty, cunning, cute, designing, devious, dodgy [chiefly British], foxy, guileful, scheming, shrewd, slick, sly, subtle, tricky, wilyRelated 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, plottingNear 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, trustingAntonyms artless, guileless, ingenuous, innocent, undesigning

2 tending or having power to deceive the beguiling allure of a life of crime Synonyms deceptive, deceitful, deceiving, deluding, delusive, delusory, fallacious, false, misleading, speciousRelated 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-facedNear Antonyms candid, direct, foursquare, frank, free-spoken, open, openhearted, outspoken, plain, plainspoken, straight; clarifying, elucidative, explanatory, illuminating; revealing, revelatory; honest, trustworthy, truthfulAntonyms aboveboard, forthright, nondeceptive, straightforward