How to Use wily in a Sentence

wily

adjective
  • She turned out to be a wily negotiator.
  • Out on the wily, windy moors, a new box office queen was crowned!
    — Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly, 15 Feb. 2026
  • And some in the crotch area because things can get a little wily.
    — Angelique Jackson, Variety, 2 May 2024
  • Los Caneleros do have a wily coach who has been around the block before.
    — SI.com, 5 June 2018
  • The piece is ready ahead of schedule, and Cox is chuffed with his wily scheme.
    — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 28 June 2021
  • Now that prices for the fruit are soaring, restaurants have found wily ways to cut costs.
    — Lila MacLellan, Quartzy, 3 Aug. 2019
  • The wily kid will not defeat the monster with the aid of magic.
    — Sasha Dovzhyk, CNN, 14 Dec. 2022
  • This wily Welshman clearly knew where the back of the net was.
    — SI.com, 19 June 2019
  • For those, Smokey, a wily teenager with a mean side-eye, is the horse of choice.
    — Michelle L. Quinn, chicagotribune.com, 9 Aug. 2021
  • Two wily cousins take on the mob while also running around a giant film set?
    — Kate Erbland, IndieWire, 19 Feb. 2025
  • Cedar’s Mitch gives the story a wily villain with freaky dance moves.
    — Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 1 Mar. 2025
  • But wily coach Floyd Burnsed knows how to get the best out of his players.
    — Joseph Dycus, The Mercury News, 16 Aug. 2024
  • Herpes viruses are wily and can stow away quietly in the roots of nerves.
    — Brenda Goodman, CNN, 30 July 2024
  • But the zebras have proved to be a wily bunch, foiling the effort week after week.
    — The New York Times, Arkansas Online, 3 Oct. 2021
  • Dueling with a wily pro like Walston wouldn’t be easy.
    — Cameron Crowe, HollywoodReporter, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Retelling the story of this wily chocolatier might seem a daunting task.
    — Mayukh Sen, Bon Appétit, 15 Dec. 2023
  • For most of the day, the wily right-hander was even better than just quality.
    — Kevin Acee, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 May 2026
  • Still, the 39-year-old Ovechkin, his beard turned salt and pepper, showed his wily ways.
    — Phil Thompson, Chicago Tribune, 5 Apr. 2025
  • The wily goat that hid her injury, and then Siegfried learned a little about himself?
    — Alice Burton, Vulture, 23 Feb. 2026
  • The liver, so damaged at that point, hadn’t been able to flush the wily critter from her system.
    — Elizabeth Millard, SELF, 2 Nov. 2017
  • But Semones is too wily of a musician to let that ride for the entire song.
    — Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 2 Dec. 2025
  • Gone is the wily Allen, who, through all his brilliance, had a penchant for a back-breaking turnover.
    — Joe Buscaglia, The Athletic, 20 Jan. 2025
  • Being a girl in this sea of boys was to be special — tough and wily and possessed of rarified taste.
    — Eryn Loeb, Longreads, 8 Apr. 2020
  • Only time will tell, although that wily Ethan Zohn is off to a pretty good start.
    — Dalton Ross, EW.com, 23 Jan. 2020
  • Colleen in the service of good was wilier than the friends of secrecy and found a way to thwart their plan.
    — Kevin Rennie, Hartford Courant, 7 Mar. 2026
  • Word of the miraculous birth reaches the wily tetrarch Herod.
    — Keith Christiansen, WSJ, 23 Dec. 2022
  • When the plague descends on the island, the wily cook rouses his fellow staff to rebel and take over the mansion.
    — Samantha Bergeson, IndieWire, 9 July 2024
  • In a reunion fraught with tension and doubt, even his own wife fails to recognize the wily Odysseus.
    — Michael Gfoeller and David H. Rundell, MSNBC Newsweek, 26 May 2025
  • The closest to a Brucey B, a wily vet who can also finish big games for you on the floor.
    — Sean Keeler, The Denver Post, 8 Apr. 2024
  • Loyal; wily; moody; sweet; and, in the case of Rocket, an animal.
    — Kelly Conaboy, The Cut, 30 Apr. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wily.' 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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