How to Use cunning in a Sentence

cunning

1 of 2 adjective
  • She was cunning enough to fool me.
  • Your words can be sharp and cunning today.
    — Usa Today, USA Today, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Goodman aims to be a cunning thief.
    — Bennett Durando, Denver Post, 7 June 2026
  • The child is as smart and cunning as Dunk is thick and guileless.
    — Lorraine Ali, Los Angeles Times, 16 Jan. 2026
  • Sorrentino pulls it off in a few cunning ways.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 27 Aug. 2025
  • And Halston has a cunning plan.
    — Kaycee Sloan, Cincinnati Enquirer, 16 Jan. 2026
  • And Halston has a cunning plan.
    — Kaycee Sloan, Cincinnati Enquirer, 13 Feb. 2026
  • What could be more cunning and disgusting than training dogs to commit anal rape?
    — David Frum, The Atlantic, 21 May 2026
  • No one deploys that with more ease and cunning than Mirren’s Elizabeth.
    — Manuel Betancourt, Variety, 22 Aug. 2025
  • The pair goes out and hustles other players with a cunning ruse that relies on the era’s racial and ethnic divisions.
    — Jeff Ihaza, Rolling Stone, 29 Dec. 2025
  • That doesn't enable cunning and unprincipled men to subvert the power of the people.
    — Lori A Bashian , Larry Fink, FOXNews.com, 30 June 2026
  • Frankie Errington leads the cast as Finch, a cunning window-washer who uses a self-help book to scheme his way to the top.
    — Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 9 Feb. 2026
  • Goldsworthy has made cunning edits of the landscape throughout Penpont.
    — Rebecca Mead, New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2026
  • This cunning predator is a nocturnal sheet web spider, Psechrus clavis, which captures fireflies as prey.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 29 Aug. 2025
  • Under this light, Penelope emerges as exemplary, cunning, wounded, and trapped by the male order that praises her.
    — David Denby, New Yorker, 21 June 2026
  • Maigret must outwit some of Paris’s most cunning and violent criminals, while dealing with his own troubled past.
    — Jessica Radloff, Glamour, 1 Oct. 2025
  • Michelle is more cunning, figuring out how to play these two to her whims, while Teddy struggles to prove her extraterrestrial origins.
    — Katie Walsh, Twin Cities, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Daemon is one of the most clever, cunning and conniving characters in House of the Dragon, who always seems to have the upper hand.
    — Skyler Trepel, PEOPLE, 22 June 2026
  • Daemon is one of the most clever, cunning and conniving characters in House of the Dragon, who always seems to have the upper hand.
    — Skyler Trepel, PEOPLE, 19 Jan. 2026
  • Bening will play Beulah Jackson, the powerful, cunning and charming head of a major ranch in Texas.
    — Rosy Cordero, Deadline, 25 Aug. 2025
  • They’re built up to be these impossibly deadly and evil and cunning foes, and then our much less impressive heroes manage to take them down through grit and determination or just dumb luck.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes.com, 22 Jan. 2026
  • They’re built up to be these impossibly deadly and evil and cunning foes, and then our much less impressive heroes manage to take them down through grit and determination or just dumb luck.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes.com, 21 Jan. 2026
  • His initial rise to fame came from playing cunning and ruthless centuries-old vampire Eric Northman on True Blood.
    — Shania Russell, Entertainment Weekly, 25 Jan. 2026
  • As Michael moves into solo stardom and makes cunning business moves, the film captures how his seemingly naive idealism was also a form of ambition.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 24 Apr. 2026
  • Past friends and former associates described him to me as an exceptionally cunning con man, a consummate charmer, and a womanizer.
    — Nate Freeman, Vanity Fair, 3 Apr. 2026
  • While people born in the year of the snake are seen as charismatic, intelligent, and artistic, they are also often considered cunning and mysterious.
    — Saman Shafiq, USA Today, 2 Jan. 2026
  • While people born in the year of the snake are seen as charismatic, intelligent, and artistic, they are also often considered cunning and mysterious.
    — Saman Shafiq, USA Today, 16 Feb. 2026
  • Bening will costar on the series as Beulah Jackson, who's described as the powerful, cunning, and charming head of a major ranch in Texas.
    — Randall Colburn, Entertainment Weekly, 7 Sep. 2025
  • Bening will costar on the series as Beulah Jackson, who's described as the powerful, cunning, and charming head of a major ranch in Texas.
    — EW.com, 31 Aug. 2025
  • Tracy and Lanthimos have already given Michelle a cunning intro by that point, revealing her to be a master of empty corporate-speak.
    — David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 28 Aug. 2025

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
  • Others praised the pup's cunning.
    — Alice Gibbs, MSNBC Newsweek, 18 Aug. 2025
  • These bikes are not public, but private, and they are equipped with cunning locks.
    — The Economist, 16 Dec. 2017
  • But the son was already known for using cunning means to reach saintly ends.
    — Dan Zak, Washington Post, 17 Mar. 2021
  • 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
  • Because Maradona, in a burst of cunning and trickery, also used his hand.
    — Esteban Campanela, CNN Money, 25 Nov. 2025
  • Landing a good apartment in New York City can take some cunning.
    — Matthew Sedacca, Curbed, 5 Nov. 2025
  • The confidence that began Carrick’s spell in charge will need to be matched with new cunning and craft.
    — Carl Anka, New York Times, 5 Mar. 2026
  • Honest Abe is forced to scheme, relying on grit and cunning to win the votes to abolish slavery.
    — Kevin P. Sullivan, Entertainment Weekly, 26 June 2026
  • 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
  • But Muck is no Epstein, malevolent and cunning.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 2 Mar. 2026
  • 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
  • Some characters are badass due to their cunning, their stealth, their intelligence, their righteiousness.
    — Carrie Wittmer, Rolling Stone, 14 Nov. 2022
  • 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
  • Maradona was the platonic ideal of a pibe, all virtuoso skill and impetuous cunning.
    — Rory Smith, New York Times, 25 Nov. 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
  • Finally the nobleman, impressed with the rabbi’s cunning, turned to leave.
    — Caren Schnur Neile, Sun Sentinel, 3 Oct. 2022
  • 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
  • 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
  • Luke Shaw’s technique and cunning at centre-back deserved to be better rewarded.
    — Laurie Whitwell, New York Times, 18 Aug. 2025
  • Is there any corroborating evidence—in the language, say—of such cunning?
    — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 10 Oct. 2021
  • 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
  • Despite framing his actions in terms of criminal cunning, Al has a visionary streak.
    — Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 18 Dec. 2021
  • Yet there is no cunning or malice to Miranda’s approach to The Circle.
    — Ariana Romero, refinery29.com, 3 Jan. 2020
  • But the country’s socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, has a cunning plan.
    — The Economist, 21 Sep. 2017
  • Unable to outrun the Bitchfist, the Hand earns his reputation for cunning and courage.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 22 June 2026
  • BlueAugury’s sort may have evolved the cunning to outwit and evade even the brainiest vertebrates; but from oneselves there’s no escape.
    — Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Longreads, 5 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cunning.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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