devious

1 clever at attaining one's ends by indirect and often deceptive means we always left it to our most devious friends to find out the latest information Synonyms beguiling, cagey (also cagy), crafty, cunning, cute, designing, artful, 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 marked by a long series of irregular curves a devious trail through the swampland Synonyms bending, crazy, curled, curling, curved, curving, curvy, crooked, serpentine, sinuous, tortuous, twisted, twisting, winding, windyRelated Words zigzag, zigzagging; circling, coiled, coiling, corkscrew, looping, spiral, spiraling (or spiralling), swirling; circuitous, indirect, roundabout; meandering, rambling, wandering; irregular, jagged, unevenNear Antonyms direct, linearAntonyms straight, straightaway

3 departing from some accepted standard of what is normal her behavior is devious because of a developmental disorder Synonyms aberrant, aberrational, abnormal, anomalous, atypical, deviate, deviant, irregular, unnatural, untypicalRelated Words unrepresentative; extraordinary, preternatural; rare, uncommon, uncustomary, unusual, unwonted; bizarre, curious, far-out, funny, kinky, odd, outlandish, out-of-the-way, outré, peculiar, quaint, queer, queerish, quirky, remarkable, screwy, strange, wacky (also whacky), way-out, weird, wild; eccentric, freakish, idiosyncratic, nonconformist, unconventional, unorthodox; extraordinary, preternatural; rare, uncommon, uncustomary, unusual, unwonted; odd, peculiar, strangeNear Antonyms common, commonplace, everyday, familiar, ordinary, routine, run-of-the-mill, run-of-the-mine (or run-of-mine), unexceptional, unremarkable, workaday; customary, usual, wonted; archetypal (also archetypical), average, characteristic, representativeAntonyms natural, normal, regular, standard, typical