Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Sly   Listen
adverb
Sly  adv.  Slyly. (Obs. or Poetic)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Sly" Quotes from Famous Books



... he is crazy, as you suggest, sir," replied Conductor Tobin, with a sly twinkle in his eyes. "It would only make matters worse to interfere with him now, and all we can do is to hope for ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... which was calculated to aggravate a lively person like Ellen Carley into some open expression of disgust or dislike. Of late, too, his attentions had been of a more pronounced character; he took to dropping sly hints of his pretensions, and it was impossible for Ellen any longer to doubt that he wanted her to be his wife. More than this, there was a tone of assurance about the man, quiet as he was, which exasperated Miss Carley beyond all measure. He had the air of being certain of success, and on more ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... they are sly rogues at best!" retorted the old woman. "The first that came, took me for a witch, and was moderately civil, but the second took away my stool and threatened to set the ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... like gold, and it's golden eating," said poor old Raffles. "I only wish that sly dog of a doctor could see me at it! He had the nerve to make me write out my own health-warrant, and it was so like my friend the hunting man's that it dispelled his settled gloom for the whole of that evening. We used to begin our drinking day ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... ole marster did. W'en Mars Dugal' went ter de sale whar he got Dilsey en Mahaly, he bought ernudder ban', by de name er Wiley. Wiley wuz one er dese yer shiny-eyed, double-headed little niggers, sha'p ez a steel trap, en sly ez de fox w'at keep out'n it. Dis yer Wiley had be'n pesterin' Dilsey 'fo' she come ter our plantation, en had nigh 'bout worried de life out'n her. She did n' keer nuffin fer 'im, but he pestered her so she ha' ter th'eaten ter tell her marster fer ter make Wiley let her 'lone. W'en he ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... the flesh of that tiger; he told me that it was not inferior to beef. When one asks these people who have never seen tigers why they affirm that this beast was a tiger, they reply that it was because it was spotted, ferocious, sly, and offered other characteristics which others have attributed to tigers. Nevertheless the majority of Spaniards affirm that they have ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... judge was not ready for this. The judge had gained a new lease of life in the last half-hour and he felt no fear of this sullen bill-poster for all his sly innuendoes. He, therefore, hindered the lawyer from his purpose, by a quick gesture of so much dignity and resolve that even the lout himself was impressed and dropped some of his ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... turned up toward the window for the briefest instant, then returned steadfastly to the street. Oh, they were sly! You could never spot them looking at you, never for sure, but they were always there, always nearby. And there was no one he could trust any longer, no one to ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse

... a funny way," said Janice, rather piqued. "I am not sly enough to be of any use to ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... he, "it's more than you nor I can do. You know," said he, with a sly look, "we might sweep up the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... Dexie. How often do you slip off to plays with that young chap next door?" said Plaisted, with a sly wink at Gussie. "I often ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... Phil were in the midst of an animated discussion about some baseball game or other that they had seen recently, Mr. Payton managed a sly wink in his wife's direction that said more plainly than any words, "Aren't you proud of them? And ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... Dashall was at the same time fully occupied in his attentions to the other sister, but could not occasionally help a sly glance at Bob, indicative of the pleasure he derived from seeing his ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... nearer. Angelique might have supposed they were going to pass by them had she not known too well their sly ways. The foremost of the five, Louise Roy, whose glorious hair was the boast of the city, suddenly threw back her veil, and disclosing a charming face, dimpled with smiles and with a thousand mischiefs lurking in her bright gray eyes, sprang towards Angelique, while her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the Parish," "Sir Andrew Wylie," "The Entail," and "The Provost"; died of paralysis at Greenock; Carlyle, who met him in London in 1832, says, "He had the air of a broad, gaucie, Greenock burgher; mouth indicating sly humour and self-satisfaction; eyes, old and without lashes, gave me a wae interest for him; says little, but that little peaceable, clear, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... if you can," laughed the Major Domo, with a sly wink at one of the Amazons who accompanied him as a ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... field. Coffee by some means we still had. Even on the desolate morning I am now telling you of many a poor foot-soldier who had been upon the almost impassable roads all night had been cheered by a sly tin cupful of the precious liquid as we trudged on toward the field. Well, we were finally ordered to halt at the little village of Rueil, within a stone's throw of the church where Josephine and Hortense lie buried. I climbed a hill on the left, and saw the French ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... coarse-handed tomboy. Her worn gloves, her faded skirt, and her man's shoes had been made hateful to her by that smug, graceful, play-acting tourist with the cool, keen eyes and smirking lips. "She pretends to be a kitten; but she isn't; she's a sly grown-up cat," she bitterly accused, but she could not deny ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... to pay his liabilities after the race: only your governor said (which he wrote it on a piece of paper, and passed it across the table to the lawyer and my lady), that some one else had better book up for him, for he'd have kep' some of the money. He's a sly old cove, your gov'nor." The expression of "old cove," thus flippantly applied by the younger gentleman to himself and his master, displeased Mr. Morgan exceedingly. On the first occasion, when Mr. Lightfoot used the obnoxious expression, his comrade's anger was only indicated by a silent frown; ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... be cross," she pleaded. "I 'm not mad, and I 'm not sly. But I 'm free and independent. What's the good of being free and independent," she largely argued, "if you can't do the things you want to? I 'm going to Craford to realise the aspiration of a lifetime. I 'm going to find out ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... that way if you like," replied the officer, with a sly smile, "but I think you will find this about the hardest nut you ever tried your teeth on—and they're pretty strong teeth too, I'll say that. You had better come into Mr. Singleton's office," and he conducted us along a corridor and into ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... calmly. "I'm not going to welcome him with open arms, though; and you needn't think I am. We fellows are just going to take a look at him on the sly, and then we can tell better how to ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... patient as a lamb: he encouraged the blessed martyrs in times of yore, and is still in existence, though his patience has somewhat diminished. Underhand is a far different character to the preceding, a double-dealing rascal, and as sly as a fox; he greets you with a smiling countenance, and while one hand is employed in shaking yours, he is disembarrassing you of the contents of your pocket with the other. Underline is a gentleman of some literary attainments, though not entirely divested of quackery; he is particularly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various

... chosen for her; and sagaciously (as they go in form to prayers, that Heaven would direct their choice) pondering upon the different proposals, as if she would make me believe she had a mind for some other? The dear sly rogue looking upon me, too, with a view to discover some emotion in me. Emotions I had; but I can tell her that they lay deeper than her eye could reach, though it had ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... agreeable to him than the rattle of cutlery. "I have scarcely [he writes] seen anything of the ——s since your departure; business and an amazing want of inclination have kept me from their threshold. Jim, that sly poacher, however, prowls about there, and vitrifies his heart by the furnace of their charms. I accompanied him there on Sunday evening last, and found the Lads and Miss Knox with them. S——was in great spirits, and played the sparkler with such great success as to silence ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... suit of linen 'ducks,' whom I did not know either, stared at me with eyes which seemed to be starting from his head; the little girl's smile abruptly faded, and, seizing her trowel, she made off without turning to look again in my direction, with an air of obedience, inscrutable and sly. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... Parnassian Grove,—as the place was christened by the young ladies of the Institute. The cry of the children was not in vain. From the pockets of demure fathers, from the bags of sharp-eyed spinsters, from the folded handkerchiefs of light-fingered sisters, from the tall hats of sly-winking brothers, there was a resurrection of the missing oranges and cakes and sugar-things in many a rejoicing family-circle, enough to astonish the most hardened "caterer" that ever contracted to feed ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to Lynch, as though the rest of us were beyond ear-shot. But all the time his eyes were upon us, measuring the effect of his words. Oh, he was a sly beast, a "slick ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... availed him nothing, and John Rebstock who, though still young, was a sly fox in crooked ways, contented himself with a philosophical denial of everything alleged against him, adding only in an injured tone that nobody would believe ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... in sweating, breathless expectation of I knew not what, my ears on the stretch, my manacled hands tight-clenched and every nerve a-tingle with this dreadful uncertainty. For a great while it seemed I lay thus, my ears full of strange noises, faint sighings, unchancy rustlings and a thousand sly, unaccountable sounds that at first caused me direful apprehensions but which, as I grew more calm, I knew for no more than the flow of the tide and the working of the vessel's timbers as she strained at her anchors. All ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... He asked a great many questions about climate, and every time he asked that I wrote that it was salubrious. You see," she explained, with a sly little air, "in the children's geographies the climate of a country is nearly always salubrious. So I took a chance on every country. ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... goodman wets his whistle, And the goodwife scolds the child; And the girls exclaim convulsively, "Have done, or I'll be riled!" When the loafer sitting next them Attempts a sly caress, And whispers, "Oh, you 'possum, You've fixed my heart, I guess!" With laughter and with weeping, Then shall they tell the tale, How Colt his foeman quartered, And died within ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... each of three winters, expended a month's salary buying geese to feed Leo and he grew fat and slick, the sly, old fox, on hot-baked goose for dinner and cold roast goose for supper. Every time he sneezed she pressed upon him the gift of a jar of goose grease with which to anoint his chest, and he blackened and sold it to his customers ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... rent-money, then nearly due. The day of sale came, and, the important lot in its turn was put up. In one of the drawers there were a number of loose newspapers, and other valueless scraps; and Caleb, with a sly grin, asked the auctioneer, if he sold the article with all its contents. "Oh, yes," said Sowerby, who was watching the sale; "the buyer may have all it contains over his bargain, and much good may it do him." A laugh followed the attorney's sneering remark, and the ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... That I will practice The Gazelle fathfully every solatary day. And give up reading on the sly while I ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... small, mean, bald, Semitic and nervous, with large ears which curved outwards from his head like leaves, and cheeks blue from much shaving. He was said to hide behind his anxious manner an acuteness that was diabolic, and to have earned his ill-health by sly dissipations for which he had paid enormous sums. There were two Wolfstein children, a boy and a girl of eleven and twelve; small, swarthy, frog-like, self-possessed. They already spoke three languages, and their protruding eyes ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... course, inevitable. Cappy realized this. For the first time in his career as a lumber and shipping king the sly old dog realized he had been out-thought, out-played, out-gamed and man-handled by a mere pup. And, though he had taken his beating like the rare old sport that he was, nevertheless the leaves of memory had a horrible ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... "No, he's too sly a fox to show face in the day-time. It's a steamer coming with troops aboard. We're goin' down ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... Walter Simpson. Both were tenderly considerate of animals, and when this little creature was ill with a cankered ear they took turns sitting up at night with him. She writes of him: "Woggs is ill-tempered, and obstinate, and rather sly, but he is lovable and intelligent. I imagine that it is with dogs as with people—it is not for being good ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... imitate some insects; mightn't he, Professor Skillings?" suggested Frank, with a sly look. "You know there are ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... And he had got to end it, somehow, for Winny's sake. He had no idea how to set about it. He could not let the little thing come and do his wife's work for her, like that, on the sly, for nothing. And yet he could not ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... of September And Free Education's sly plot; I know no reasons Why cancelling fees on The poor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various

... hide-bags of dirt suspended on a bamboo, and followed the loaded carts through the diggings with the peculiar trot they always adopted when bearing burdens. What Long noticed was that every now and again, when passing the tips on the claims of the Europeans, the sly Celestials dug their shovels into the wash-dirt, and threw a few shovelfuls on to their own loads or into the bags they carried. Keeping himself in concealment, Levi quietly awakened a few of the diggers, and drew their attention to what was going ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... boys strong aristocratic principles and hatred of Democracy and of the French in particular; we were ordered to write themes against the French Revolution and verses of triumph over their defeats, with now and then a sly theme on the great advantage of hereditary nobility; in these verses God Almighty was to be represented as closely allied to the British Government and a sleeping partner of the Administration. One of the fellows of Eton College actually told the late Mr Adam Walker, the celebrated ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... predecessor, I forget which, had insisted on putting his horse through a ride round the parapet of the Pincian balustrade, where a slip or a yielding stone meant death to the rider, which might have been of no importance, but to the horse also, which would have been a pity. And the old man liked a sly thrust at any of us ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... sly fox, you are right, we are swindled like—like shareholders!" said Crevel. "All such women are an unlimited liability, and we the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... it's too late," objected Cora with a sly look at Betty and Walter. "We should have sent the warning on ahead ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose

... the barrel and carried it carefully in front of him, head up, that the sly old woodchuck might not steal a march on him. Then the Boy picked up Bones in his oat-bag, and closed the cabin door. As the party left the island with loud tramping of feet on the little bridge, the young fox crept slyly from behind ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... inordinate conceit They utterly despised these Cossack thieves; And thought the ruffians easier to beat Than porters carpets think, or ushers boys. Meanwhile, a sly spectator of their joys, The Cossack captain giggled in ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... far beyond a woman's province. But she listened with lurking interest in her eyes while Thomas and Eric pelted on each other with facts and statistics and opinions, and on the rare occasions when Eric scored a point she permitted herself a sly little ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... a look of apprehension). The devil is a sly rogue. Their worships might perhaps desire my company a little longer than I should wish; and, for sheer farce sake, I may be broken on ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... with that sly shrewdness so characteristic of him, so well symbolized by his mulberry badge—a humorous shrewdness almost, which makes him one of the most delightful rogues in history, just as he was one of the most debonair and cultured. ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... they are foreign to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to the manifold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its effects. Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow: he alternates between epigrammatic pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and daring piquancy; and athwart all those there runs a vein of sadness, tenderness and grandeur which ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... attracted the prince's attention. It showed a man of about fifty, wearing a long riding-coat of German cut. He had two medals on his breast; his beard was white, short and thin; his face yellow and wrinkled, with a sly, suspicious expression ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... been communing with death, had for the first time completely realized the fact and the meaning of death. What a demon of the world it was, sly, bitter, chuckling at its power, the one thing, surely, that has perfect enjoyment of all the things in the scheme of the earth. What a trick it had played on Julian and on Valentine. What a trick! And as this idea struck into Julian's mind ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... he said, so that he would assist me. I was pretty sure that she was in a state to require opiates; and I had not forgotten Christopher Sly, you may be sure, so I told him what I had in my head. That in the dead of night—the quiet time in the streets,—she should be carried in a hospital litter, softly and warmly covered over, from the Leicester Square lodging-house to rooms that I would have in perfect readiness for her. As ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... usual sly hits at several well-known society women whose public charities covered a multitude of private sins, followed by a very inadequately veiled reference to the chief actors in a recent divorce case, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... do anything, go anywhere, speak on any topic! Now she makes you pull the chestnuts out of the fire and thinks I do not see her waiting behind. Ah, the hand is the hand of Esau, the voice is the voice of Jacob, wicked, sly, skulking, mystifying Jacob. Why don't "secretaries" write the official letters? How much they leave the "president" to do! Naughty idlers, those secretaries! Well, let me thank Miss Secretary Anthony for her gentle consideration; then let me say I'll try ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... were perhaps a little too easy going, had always defended their methods good-naturedly. What especially irritated Aaron was their calm assumption that he did not know what he was talking about, because he had no children of his own, and their sly thrusts at the perfection of "bachelors' children" made him ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... to them. It is that when they are fairly on their putting, and are apparently doing all that Nature intended them to do, and are feeling contented in body and mind accordingly, they should take a sly but very careful look at their feet and body and everything else just after they have made a successful long putt, having felt certain all the time that they would make it. This examination ought not to be premeditated, because that ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... therefore, he was ready to purchase its speed and convenience. He cared little for the sensation he would create in riding up to his sister's door in Brooklyn, though he chuckled mightily at the thought of what his old dad would say; and as they claimed a place among the millionaires he broke into a sly smile. "If ever a bog-trotter landed at Castle Garden, me father was wan o' them. I can remember the hat he wore. 'Twas a 'stovepipe,' sure enough. It had no rim at all at all! It was fuzzy as a cat. If ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... how the accusation worked, although it was an arrow shot at a venture. His greasy, sly, fox face with its touch of bold impudence betrayed him for a man who would habitually hedge his bets. Feisul's safe-conduct had protected him from official interference, but it had needed more than that to preserve him from unofficial murder, and beyond ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... the lawyer retorted, smiling. "He is—he is not your friend or relative, is he? He is such a blockhead, and, saving your presence, at the same time such a sly beast!" ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... impression. Herr Ander, too, had appeared on the scene, but without knowing a single note of the music or attempting to sing it. Both my princely friends, as well as Fraulein Couqui, the premiere danseuse, who singularly enough had attended the rehearsal on the sly, overwhelmed me with enthusiastic marks of admiration. Hearing of my ardent desire for retirement in order to go on with the composition of a new work, the Metternichs one day suggested that they were in a position to offer me just ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... jaw 'bout'n it, boy. Yer stepdad wouldn't let the beastis stay thar a minute ef he knowed it, 'kase—waal—'kase me an' him hev hed words. Slip the beastis in on the sly. Pearce Tallam don't feed an' tend ter his critters nohow. I hev hearn ez his boys do that job, so he ain't like ter find it out. On the ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... how the poor brute had been tempted to sheep-killing at night, on the sly; and the look in his eyes when, detected at length, he had crawled forward to his master to be shot. No other sentence was possible, and ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... grip that weak little Reverend has already got on this town," he went on. "He's a sly one. Preaching ain't in it with the undercurrent he's let loose here. It's just sapping the foundations of society. It's setting free a lot of good stuff, but it's striking Tate an ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... crossed a moonlit place Agony saw that it was painted bright red, the color of the canoes belonging to the Boy's Camp located about a half mile down the river. Agony realized what the presence of that canoe meant. One of the girls of Keewaydin had been out canoeing on the sly with some boy from Camp Alamont—a thing forbidden in the Keewaydin code—and was being brought back in this surreptitious manner. Who could the girl be? Agony grimaced with disgust. She waited quietly ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey

... French phrase, that "he played the politician about cabbages and turnips." His unjustifiable impression of the Patriot King, as it can be imputed to no particular motive, must have proceeded from his general habit of secrecy and cunning; he caught an opportunity of a sly trick, and pleased himself with the thought ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... meal was duly prepared and disposed of, and, as the afternoon wore away, the three travellers began to examine the date indicator and to ask themselves surreptitiously whether or not they actually felt any younger. They took sly peeps at each other's faces to observe, if possible, any signs ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... attitude of hostility. He talked boldly. But after the 18th Brumaire he maintained an unbroken silence, the philosophy of the strong; he struggled no longer against public opinion, and contented himself with attending to his own affairs,—wise conduct, which led his neighbors to pronounce him sly, for he owned, it was said, a fortune of not less than a hundred thousand francs in landed property. In the first place, he spent nothing; next, this property was legitimately acquired, partly from the inheritance of his father-in-law's estate, ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... decent turf, but those ugly black coals, and never a draught through the chamber, except when I took it unbeknownst to you. Ah, Nora guessed that her father was dying, and there was no way of saving him but doing it on the sly. Well, I'm here, the girleen has managed it, and here I'll stay. Not all the doctors in the land, nor all the fine English grooms, shall take me back again. I'll walk back when I'm fit to walk, and I'll do my best to bear all that awful furniture; but in future ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... to. I used to restrict myself to four and five hours a day and five days in the week, but this time I have wrought from breakfast till 5.15 P.M. six days in the week, and once or twice I smouched a Sunday when the boss wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature hooked on Sunday, on the sly. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... insolent way in which they carried off whatever they could seize. When I opposed them, the club or tomahawk, the musket or kawas (i. e. killing-stone), being instantly raised, intimated that my life would be taken, if I resisted. Their skill in stealing on the sly was phenomenal! If an article fell, or was seen on the floor, a Tanna-man would neatly cover it with his foot, while looking you frankly in the face, and, having fixed it by his toes or by bending in his great toe like a thumb to hold it, would walk off with it, assuming the most innocent ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... said vehemently, "that if the poor thing didn't bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there. I do think men are cunning brutes. I've let it go twice, on the sly; it's nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply mad with joy; but it always runs back home at last, and they chain it up again. If I had my way, I'd chain that man up." Jon saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. "I'd brand ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... from seventy as most people do from five-and-thirty; and when Death presents his dart, you will feel like one that has been defrauded of a most precious privilege. You will go off in a state of impious discontent, as if you had been shockingly ill-used.' Such is one of his sly plans for rousing her to a sense of the impropriety of her ways; but all such quips and cranks are in vain. Only don't absolutely shake her in her bed before her thirteenth hour of rest, and you may say what you please. It cannot be implied that she is hardened, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... virago, abused her neighbors to the wee, wiry, weird, widow woman, the Widow Wiggins' wonderful cat would mew. And so the vile, vixenish virago wished the cat was dead. And when slender, slim, slippery Sly Slick, Esq., tried to persuade the widow to swindle her neighbor, the cat mewed furiously. And so it came that Mr. Slick did not like the wee widow's wonderful cat. In fact, he said it was a nuisance. And Tilda Tattle, the tiresome-tongued, town tale-bearer, could not abide the cat, because it ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... to one of Lady Dawdley's boys, and hers is the only house where I am allowed to smoke unmolested; but I have never been able to admire Dawdley, a sly, sournois, spiritless, lily-livered fellow, that took his name off all his clubs the year ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... two children I refer to were about nine years old. They seemed to think a very great deal of each other, but were very shy in the presence of others. He often sent the little girl presents of flowers and candy on the sly. They continued to love each other for three or four years, until they finally ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell

... reached this house last night, it was surrounded, with the door beaten down and men swarming within. So I, being Saxon, and not suspected in the dark, entered, shouting, with others. And in my lady's chamber found I that red Wulf, who is no wolf, but a sly thieving fox, and tried to slay him. But he got away. I am my ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... female toilette to those whom it most nearly concerns. But in his case, the scolding or pouting should not be inexorable; for in one way he atones amply for all his impertinence. He paints his young ladies pretty and graceful, being, with all his sly satire, evidently fond of the sex, the juvenile portion at least. Surely, a Compliment so uniform and tasteful must more than outweigh his teasing and banter with the amiable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... am Christophero Sly, call not mee Honour nor Lordship: I ne're drank sacke in my life: and if you giue me any Conserues, giue me conserues of Beefe: nere ask me what raiment Ile weare, for I haue no more doublets then backes: no more stockings then legges: nor no more shooes then feet, nay sometime more feete ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... are now no more than the signals to summon up a tribe of ugly phantoms. Famine, and blindness, and death, and savage enemies, never fail to be conjured up by the silence and darkness of the night. I cannot dissipate them by any efforts of reason. Sly cowardice requires the perpetual consolation of light. My heart droops when I mark the decline of the sun, and I never sleep but with a candle burning at my pillow. If, by any chance, I should awake and find myself immersed in ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... trouble of the young thing, the responsibility—havin' to keep your eyes upon her every blessed moment for fear she do the thing she ought not to—that's what weighs upon me. Oh, yes, they'll pay so much a quarter for her! it's not that. But to be always at the heels of a young, sly puss after mischief—it's more'n I'm equal to, I ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... found Hunky standing at a corner of Twenty-third Street and Third Avenue after an absence of several months. In ten minutes we had a little round table between us in a quiet corner, and my ears began to get busy. I leave out my sly ruses and feints to draw Hunky's word-of-mouth blows—it all came to something ...
— Options • O. Henry

... queerly built. Short, thin, lively, with a little red beard, sly greenish eyes, he looked as though he said to ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... Padua refused; Giuliano Cassiani had been sent to prison in 1617 for publishing some verses of Testi against Spain. The Inquisition withheld its imprimatur. Attempts were made to have it printed on the sly at Padua; but the craftsman who engaged to execute this job was imprisoned. At last, in 1622, Tassoni contrived to have the poem published in Paris. The edition soon reached Italy. In Rome it was prohibited, but freely sold; and at last Gregory XV. allowed it to be reprinted with ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... mouse, Running all about the house, Through the hole your little eye In the wainscot peeping sly, Hoping soon some crumbs to steal, To make quite a hearty meal. Look before you venture out, See if pussy is about. If she's gone, you'll quickly run To the larder for some fun; Round about the dishes creep, Taking into each a peep, To choose the daintiest that's there, Spoiling ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)

... Forty years ago the times were wild, and what did it matter. Convict and thief the squatters round called him, and his grandsons, in their opinion, were the most accomplished cattle-duffers in all the country round, and as for the accommodation-house—well, if the old woman did go in for sly grog-selling, the police were a long way off, and it was no business of anybody's. And Nellie Durham was a pretty girl, a little simple perhaps, but still sweetly pretty, with those wistful blue eyes, fringed with dark lashes, that looked out at ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... his hand upon the door-knob and a sly grin upon his face, "I ain't saying a word about anything. Only—if you might happen to want some—eggs—for your mince pies, you might look good under the southeast corner of the third haystack, counting from the big corral. I believe ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... case with a good many romances in reality. Mr. Davis was destined to retain for a long time a vivid recollection of the first night which he spent in alternately feeding that baby with a spoon, and in walking the floor with it; and also to remember the sly glances which his parishioners only half hid from him when his unpleasant plight was ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... us, Laura, is that we become wise too late in life. Young people are often their own worst enemies, and if you wish to do them good, you must do it, as it were, on the sly. If one tries openly to reform and guide them—if I should say plainly, Such and such are your faults; such and such places and associations are full of danger—they would be angry or disgusted, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... faithfully striven to imitate My Mentor in dress and diction, And loyally laboured to cultivate A taste for the latest fiction; Though I still read DICKENS upon the sly, And ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... Mahoudeau vented his rage against that brute of a Chaine! Hadn't he, one night on coming home unexpectedly, found him treating Mathilde, the herbalist woman, to a pot of jam? No, he would never forgive him for treating himself in that dirty fashion to delicacies on the sly, while he, Mahoudeau, was half starving, and eating dry bread. The deuce! one ought ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... Jake did not enter the station. She had no sooner taken up her position in the shelter of the billboard than she was able to single him out from the men who were lounging about, waiting for the train. His movements were still furtive and sly, and Bessie had to repress a shudder of disgust. Such work seemed to bring out everything small and mean and sly in Jake's nature, and Bessie's thoughts were full of sympathy for his father. After all, Paw Hoover had always ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart

... mid-country champion belt for wrestling, till the great Adam o' Lincoln cast him in the ring and broke one of his ribs; but at quarterstaff he had never yet met his match in all the country about. Besides all this, he dearly loved the longbow, and a sly jaunt in the forest when the moon was full and the dun deer in season; so that the King's rangers kept a shrewd eye upon him and his doings, for Arthur a Bland's house was apt to have aplenty of meat in it that was more like ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... he exclaimed, with an assumption of facetious bonhomie particularly distasteful to me. "All the world lives in London, I think! It's where you'll always come across anyone you want. Sly dog! Following a lady, I'll be bound! By Jove! I wouldn't have thought it of you, Galbraith! But you'll not find anything choice in Regent Street. Come with me, and I'll ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... there had been a great Lorrain warrior and a great Lorrain churchman; and, what is more singular, the churchmen all bore a strong resemblance in the face to Ximenes, as did Cardinal Richelieu in after days. These five great cardinals all had sly, mean, and yet terrible faces; while the warriors, on the other hand, were of that type of Basque mountaineer which we see in Henri IV. The two Balafres, father and son, wounded and scarred in the same manner, lost something of this type, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... that a group of red men are so at their wit's end as were the Pawnees. They stood looking about them, silent and bewildered. Wimmoroo took a sly glance at the tree tops as though he half expected to see the missing Shawanoe perched ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... sure she loved Papa. It was she who ran to warm his slippers when his horse's feet came prancing down the avenue. It was she who wheeled the arm-chair to its nice, snug corner; it was she who ran for the dressing-gown; it was she who tucked in the pockets a sly bit of candy, that she had hoarded all day for "poor, tired Papa." It was she who laid her soft hand upon his throbbing temples, when those long, ugly rows of figures at the counting-room, had given him such a cruel headache. It was she who kneeled beside her bed and taught herself ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... grove with the cavalryman, while the orderly held their horses a short space away. Armitage had gone forward to his advance, and Chester showed no surprise at the sight of the sergeant seated side by side with the colonel and in confidential converse with him. There was a quaint, sly twinkle in Maynard's eyes as ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King

... was rather anomalous. A younger woman might have managed differently. There was a new scholar that rather crowded them on the bench. And the boy back of her did some sly things that annoyed her. He gave her hair a twitch now and then. One day he dropped a little toad on her book, at which she screamed, though an instant after she was not at all afraid. Of course, he was whipped for that, and for once she did not ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... he had done to Mr. Walmsley, who objected to his having already brought his heroine into great distress, and asked him, 'how can you possibly contrive to plunge her into deeper calamity?' Johnson, in sly allusion to the supposed oppressive proceedings of the court of which Mr. Walmsley was register, replied, 'Sir, I can put her into the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... knew that I would be of vast good to the community. "I have heard of the Aimes conspiracy," said he, "and I am glad that I met you, for I wanted to talk to you about it. The truth of it all is, not that you once larruped that fellow Bentley, but that old Aimes wishes to put a sly indignity upon me by misusing one who has been entertained at my house. That's the point, sir. He heard that I had given you countenance at my board, and what his sister afterward told him was an excuse for the exercise, sir, of his distemper. But, by—I came ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... surprise at the strange recognition (it was all so sudden), the two old friends came to closer quarters. They touched gingerly on the past, had some tender passages of delicate fencing, gave various sly hits and digs, threw out certain subtle hints, and came to a mutual and satisfactory understanding. Neither had ever looked at anybody else since their rupture, and therefore ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... Sandy proceeded, "because I seed a flicker in the woman's eye when she learned the two names of us. She's a sly ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... to sea and back, and though we had seen no river yet in this island, it was evident that this was one of the monsters crawling about on the shore, and I seemed to see it in the moonlight with its great coarse, scaly back, crooked legs, long stiff tail, and hideous head with sly cruel-looking eyes, and wide, long, ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... mistaken. Spite of her change in manner, dress, and appearance, it was Mary Simms. This woman some years before, when she was still very young, had been a sort of humble companion to my mother. A simple-minded, honest girl, we thought her. Sometimes I had fancied that she had paid me, in a sly way, a marked attention. I had been foolish enough to be flattered by her stealthy glances and her sighs. But I had treated these little demonstrations of partiality as due only to a silly girlish fancy. Mary Simms, however, had come to grief in our household. She had been detected in the ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Sea Puss is found, Cat-like, forever chasing round and round. She has no claws, but crouching sly and low She stealthily puts out her undertow. And when an old seadog comes in her way I'll warrant you there is the ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells

... lo! her purple slaves! Sots in embroidery, and sots in crape, Of every order, station, rank, and shape: The king, who nods upon his rattle throne; The staggering peer, to midnight revel prone; The slow-tongued bishop, and the deacon sly, The humble pensioner, and gownsman dry; The proud, the mean, the selfish, and the great, Swell the dull throng, and stagger into state. Lo! proud Flaminius at the splendid board, The easy chaplain of an atheist ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... mind to lend you a box on the ear," I answered her in my vexation, "and I would, if you had not been crying so, you sly good-for-nothing baggage. As it is, I shall keep it for Master Faggus, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... dismay in the last words which Apollonius connected with the failure at a reconciliation. Fritz Nettenmair repeated them softly, and this time they sounded like a mockery of Apollonius, like mocking regret at the failure of a sly trick. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... Hebrew. It is Wessely who does all the work for which I am praised—it is he who is elevating our Jewish brethren, with whom I have not the heart nor the courage to strive. Or there is Nicolai, the founder of 'The Library of the Fine Arts,' to which," he added with a sly smile, "I hope yet to see you contributing. Perhaps Fraeulein Reimarus will convert you—that charming young lady there talking with her brother-in-law, who is a Danish state-councillor. She is the great friend of Lessing—as I live, there comes Lessing himself. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... same for me. But if it's comin' on to blow, we might as well get another anchor out. I'll start Constable Denslow 'round town to see what he can see. If he's sly enough and she's still here he prob'ly can locate her. And if he can scare her off, so ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... tail five inches and a quarter, near an inch of it on the tip, black. The colour of the body was dirty white, bordering on cream colour; the hair on the belly rather whiter, softer and longer than on the rest of the body. His look was sly and wily; he built his nest on trees, and did ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various

... boys who make out to be men because they smoke on the sly," Elmer went on to say. "More than one barn has been set on fire by smokers using matches in the hay. Tramps are responsible for a heap of this waste; and I don't blame any farmer for asking such a question. I'm ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... Christopher Sly," said Doris, surveying the scene, with her hands in her jacket pockets. "So will ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... He placed beyond doubt the fact that He did not intend to hasten His steps, neither cut short His journey nor cease His labors through fear of Herod Antipas, who for craft and cunning was best typified by a sly and murderous fox. Nevertheless it was Christ's intention to go on, and soon in ordinary course He would leave Perea, which was part of Herod's domain, and enter Judea; and at the foreknown time would make His final entry into Jerusalem, for in that city was He to ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... Everybody said so, and what everybody says must be so. Reddy Fox had always been very sly and not bold at all. The truth is Reddy Fox had so many times fooled Bowser the Hound and Farmer Brown's boy that he had begun to think himself very smart indeed. He had really fooled himself. Yes, Sir, Reddy Fox had fooled himself. He thought himself ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess

... started and, turning his back on her, wound up the clock. "Yes, 'e has," he said, with a sly grin. ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... of that fatal moment of initial alarm. Surely, with the knowledge of that hidden bow in his mind, he should be able now to place his hand upon the person who had made use of it to launch the fatal arrow. No one, however sly of foot and quick of action, could have gone far from the gallery where that bow lay in the few minutes which were all that could have elapsed between the shooting of the arrow and the gasping cry which had brought all within hearing to the Apache section. The man or ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... in the habit of wandering about our garden every evening on the look-out for rooks. I had long cherished a hatred for those wary, sly, and rapacious birds. On the day of which I have been speaking, I went as usual into the garden, and after patrolling all the walks without success (the rooks knew me, and merely cawed spasmodically at a distance), I chanced to go close to the low fence which separated our domain from the ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... unblushing, with a sly smile still hovering over her features. Bambousse, a stout, sweating, round-faced man, left his work and ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... very end you will give in, as though unwillingly, as though against your will, as though from infatuation, a momentary caprice, and—which is the main thing—as though on the sly from me. You understand? For this the fools pay enormous money. However, it seems I will ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... gentleman who makes you feel merry the moment you set eyes on him. And Father Laughter first introduces the Baron Munchausen, who will tell some of his marvelous experiences. We are not compelled to believe all of them. Perhaps Father Laughter wanted to take a sly dig or two at the yarns some travelers tell when they get home. By this means the story illustrates one of the great sources of humor—monstrous exaggeration. It also shows what a foolish thing it is to be a boaster. Most people, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... bestow upon my godchild and I have resolved at last." "I pr'ythee, what?" sayes he. "I'faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a dozen good Lattin spoons, and thou shalt translate them." Lattin, as everybody knows, was a mixed metal resembling brass: the play upon words and sly fun poked at Jonson's scholarship are in Shakespeare's best manner. The story must be regarded as Shakespeare's answer to Jonson's sneer that he had "little ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... folks I'd suspected of wantin' to carve up Spotty! Why, by the looks I saw thrown at him by them two, I knew they thought him the finest thing that ever happened. Just by the way Mareena reached out sly to pat his hair when she passed, you could see how ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... I ain' never marry cause you had to court on de sly in dat day en time. I tell you, I come through de devil day when I come along. I was learned to work by de old, old slavery way en, honey, I say dat I just as soon been come through slavery day as to come under a tight taskmassa dat was colored. Yes, mam, if I never did a thing right, my dress was ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... crocodile made a second dash at them, and seized another water-skin that a woman had dropped in her flight. They believe this to be the same monster that took a woman a few months ago. Few creatures are so sly and wary as the crocodile. I watch them continually as they attack the dense flocks of small birds that throng the bushes at the water's edge. These birds are perfectly aware of the danger, and they fly from the attack, if possible. The crocodile then quietly and innocently lies ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... and their keepers, always sly crooks, form a particular study in themselves. One pretends to be a garage, another a private hotel, a third a small greengrocer's, and a fourth a boot repairer's. All those trades are carried on as "blinds." The public believe them to be honest businesses, but ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... shall know I have secured all I would wish," added Harry Bennett, with rather a sly twinkle in ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden

... been noticing the clouds since morning; his sailor training told him it would not be long before rain would fall, so he answered the Sheriff's appeal with a sly wink ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... thousands, more or less, roamin' about the Rockies, in all stages of oldness—from experienced mammas to great-grandmothers, to say nothin' o' the old gentlemen; but you'll find most of 'em powerful sly an' ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... said his father, with a sly smile; "people say that she is a perfect siren. I have myself been warned against ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... or write and had to preach what massa told me and he say tell them niggers iffen they obeys the massa they goes to Heaven but I knowed there's something better for them, but daren't tell them 'cept on the sly. That I done lots. I tells 'em iffen they keeps prayin' the Lord will set 'em free. But since them days I's done studied some and I preached all over Panola and Harrison County and I started the Edward's Chapel over there ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... once I have known him blunder in a Latin quotation that I might correct him. Aileen and he had a hundred topics in common from which I was excluded by reason of my ignorance of the Highlands, but the Macdonald was as sly as a fox on my behalf. He would draw out the girl about the dear Northland they both loved and then would suddenly remember that his pistols needed cleaning or that, he had promised to "crack" with some chance gentleman stopping at the inn, and away he would go, leaving us two alone. While ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... then appointed two Bishops to take care of his kingdom in his absence, and gave great powers and possessions to his brother John, to secure his friendship. John would rather have been made Regent of England; but he was a sly man, and friendly to the expedition; saying to himself, no doubt, 'The more fighting, the more chance of my brother being killed; and when he is killed, then I ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... that'd wake up the nation. Ever'body worked from sunup 'till sundown. If we didn't git up when we was s'posed to we got a beatin'. Marster'd make 'em beat the part that couldn't be bought." Melvin chuckled at his own sly way of saying that the slaves ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... young man, with a very good-humoured face, and a sly smile constantly playing at the corners of his mouth. He no doubt guessed the cause of the disturbance, for he asked, "Was ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... with favor by the Venetian government but most of the native artists were jealous of the foreigner and not friendly. They complained that his art was like nothing set down as "correct" or "classical" but still they admired it and copied it, too, on the sly. ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor

... would point to them as an illustration of justice visited on blind youth, and would chuckle to observe Henry in the process of receiving his come-uppance: the younger set would quake with merriment and poor jokes and sly allusions to Henry's ancient grandeur. Even Bob Standish would have to hide his amusement; why, Bob himself had made society and success his fetiches. And Anna—Anna who was so ambitious for him—how could she endure the status of ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... to help your town," Mrs. Sampson said, regretfully. "The men that voted for you'll expect you to do it; but it's helping on a sly scheme at the expense of the state. I'm sorry you've got ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... glasses of grog going, a little noisy, rattling talk, a few smiles and a saucy answer or two from the girl, a look at the last newspaper, or a bit of the town news from the landlord; he's always time to read. Hang him—I mean confound him—for he's generally a sly old spider who sucks us fellows pretty dry, and then don't care what becomes of us. Well, it don't amount to much, but it's life—the only taste of it that chaps like us are likely to get. And people may talk as much as they like; boys, and men too, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... is true, the Arabian sage returned to his allegiance, and thereafter composed a genuine continuation of the Knight of La Mancha, in which the said Avellaneda of Tordesillas is severely chastised. For in this you pseudo-editors resemble the juggler's disciplined ape, to which a sly old Scotsman likened James I., "if you have Jackoo in your hand, you can make him bite me; if I have Jackoo in my hand, I can make him bite you." Yet, notwithstanding the amende honorable thus made by Cid Hamet Benengeli, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... old Ayrshire farmer had the portraits of himself and his wife painted. When that of her husband, in an elegant frame, was hung over the fireplace, the gudewife remarked in a sly manner: "I think, gudeman, noo that ye've gotten your picture hung up there, we should just put in below't, for a motto, like, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson



Words linked to "Sly" :   artful, slyness, crafty, foxy, dodgy, tricky, cunning, wily, guileful, knavish, slick, on the sly, tricksy



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com