sneaky
/ˈsniːki
/adjective (sneakier, sneakiest)
1Furtive; sly: sneaky, underhand tactics...
- Then she opens her eyes to check with sneaky little sidewards glances.
- In other words, a sneaky, crafty, deceitful person would take on the form of a snake.
- This is a sneaky development, an under-hand, sleazy way of slipping a salesman into your home without you knowing.
Synonyms
sly, crafty, cunning, wily, clever, artful, scheming, devious, guileful, tricky, conniving, designing, deceitful, duplicitous, dishonest, disingenuous, underhand, untrustworthy, unscrupulous, double-dealing;
furtive, secretive, secret, stealthy, surreptitious, sneaking, skulking, slinking, clandestine, hidden, covert, cloaked, conspiratorial, under the table;
Military black
informal dirty, foxy, shifty
British informal fly
Australian/New Zealand informal shonky
South African informal slim
archaic subtle
rare carny
2(Of a feeling) persistent but reluctantly held; sneaking: I developed a sneaky fondness for the old lady...
- But I have a sneaky feeling that they are talking about what goes into kebabs.
- We all had a sneaky feeling that we didn't score enough runs that day.
- I have a sneaky feeling that you have at least two different personalities.
Derivatives
sneakily
- I had secretly and sneakily created her gift weeks before she would open it.
- The whole album shimmers, and the songs - though not as uptempo as most tunes that you can't get out of your head - are sneakily infectious.
- Thomas says the team also managed to sneakily promote New Zealand by placing the name on the boat's foresail, in clear breach of rules forbidding corporate logos.
sneakiness
- And they've been trying to shake off their reputation for sneakiness, deviousness, and just plain disgustingness, hoping for a new image in the 21st century.
- It's not so much the positions we take, it's the sneakiness they can't abide.
- And as it turns out, uneducated village Communists are no match for wily bourgeois sneakiness.