What's the difference between astute and cunning?

Astute


Definition:

  • (a.) Critically discerning; sagacious; shrewd; subtle; crafty.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) There is an enjoyment that comes with owning it, a pleasure, but also he is an astute businessman.
  • (2) Blair knew Short was close to Brown at the time and had astutely chosen her to be the messenger.
  • (3) With astute assessment and intervention, agitation can be prevented and treated to enhance recovery from critical illness.
  • (4) Latham is angry, outrageous, insulting – with a lifelong chip on his shoulder – as well as astute, brave and far more readable than most.
  • (5) The critical care nurse who is astute to the possible causes of postoperative delirium and to treatments and interventions required will help to minimize the morbidity associated with postoperative delirium.
  • (6) He and Hunt are too politically astute to fall out.
  • (7) The cause of his chief complaint and presenting symptoms challenged the astuteness of clinicians, surgeons, and histopathologists on two continents and the high seas.
  • (8) The astute Rawling pointed out to Klitschko that his opponent was capable of anything – Chisora had bitten one opponent in the ring while kissing another at a press conference.
  • (9) Under the astute, paternal Wicks, Cooper won his first nine fights, the ninth against an old foe, the 15-stone Bygraves, which was especially rewarding.
  • (10) However, she is the most astute image-shaper in sport bar none, seducing swathes of tame tennis writers to plug her sweets, charming hosts with just a hint of a smile, disarming critics with a pursed-lip frostiness of which Madonna would be proud.
  • (11) They alert the astute examiner to several life-threatening problems that result from both benign and malignant islet cell tumors, adenocarcinomas of the pancreas, and pancreatic endocrine and inflammatory diseases.
  • (12) Soaring land values and astute buying and selling have helped the value of the Crown Estate pass £10bn for the first time, a rise of 15% over the past year alone.
  • (13) Because, as Rafael Behr so astutely observed recently , when immigration minister Mark Harper's rhetoric, in justifying this deplorable campaign, strays in the same breath on to immigration in general putting "pressure on our infrastructure", the distinction between legal and illegal immigrant is lost.
  • (14) He is far too astute an analyst of comedy to be unaware of the danger of looking smug and there were sufficient layers of irony and knowing jokes within jokes for the conceit to work.
  • (15) As she matured she also developed into an astute and sensitive dance actor; her portrayal of characters such as Manon or Natalia Petrovna in A Month in the Country were refreshingly free of ballet cliche.
  • (16) As a portrait of modern society, it is startlingly astute – a scene with two schoolgirls arguing at a bus stop is uncanny in its depiction of south London slang, and speech mannerisms, and all the more notable because this is so rarely done accurately and with empathy.
  • (17) At one point Neymar began to compare himself to previous winners Ronaldo and Ronaldinho prompting Scolari to cut in, cuffing him fondly on the back of the neck while making an astute diversionary remark about comparable hairstyles.
  • (18) Physicians should focus astutely on internal and external sites of inflammation as possible focuses for tumor recurrence in the follow-up of the cancer patient.
  • (19) Although elderly patients may present a special challenge, the negative consequences of immobility can be avoided, to a significant extent, with astute and vigilant nursing management.
  • (20) Politically astute, photogenic and backed by his father’s political machine, Biden was elected attorney general of Delaware with 52.6% of the vote.

Cunning


Definition:

  • (a.) Knowing; skillful; dexterous.
  • (a.) Wrought with, or exhibiting, skill or ingenuity; ingenious; curious; as, cunning work.
  • (a.) Crafty; sly; artful; designing; deceitful.
  • (a.) Pretty or pleasing; as, a cunning little boy.
  • (a.) Knowledge; art; skill; dexterity.
  • (a.) The faculty or act of using stratagem to accomplish a purpose; fraudulent skill or dexterity; deceit; craft.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But the Franco-British spat sparked by Dave's rejection of Angela and Nicolas's cunning plan to save the euro has been given wings by news the US credit agencies may soon strip France of its triple-A rating and is coming along very nicely, thank you. "
  • (2) According to his blog, he's been acting on the advice of a friend and pursuing a course of "silence, exile and cunning", but I'm not sure a couple of years of not giving interviews to Heat qualifies.
  • (3) "They are alert, cunning and devious individuals who have current knowledge of investigative methods and techniques which may be used against them," said an internal report.
  • (4) 3.16pm BST Myners explains that his solution is a PLC-plus board -- a highly qualified board, holding the executive to account, complemented by a national council who is charged with checking that the board is doing what it should ( acting like shareholders, effectively ) He denies that it's a cunning plan to get his friends onto the Co-op board.
  • (5) The SNP minority government at Holyrood after 2007 survived from day to day by cunning deals that played the other parties off against one another.
  • (6) In fact, not only have the teams that failed to qualify not been invited to play, for if they were that would contradict the elitist terms of the qualification that are disavowed so cunningly here by Pitbull, but also in reality, only Fifa functionaries, Brazilian bureaucrats and half the BBC will get into Brazil's stadiums gratis this summer.
  • (7) The capacity of urea-N synthesis (CUNS), the galactose elimination capacity (GEC) and the antipyrine clearance (APC) were measured in rats immediately after 30, 70 and 90% partial hepatectomy and after sham operation.
  • (8) 1980 was his best year for opera: the Cologne company (whose music director, John Pritchard, became a staunch supporter) brought Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte and Cimarosa's Il Matrimonio Segreto, Glasgow provided Berg's Wozzeck and Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen, and the festival itself produced a distinguished world premiere in Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse.
  • (9) In it she explains how she scratched the graffito "My French teacher is a cun-" on a door, and was stopped just as she finished that crucial "t".)
  • (10) Putin is a cunning negotiator with the skills of a KGB colonel, varying between brute force, charm and obfuscation.
  • (11) He added that the core message from Pyongyang was that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service was using the reptiles “as part of a ‘cunning scheme’ to challenge our unity”.
  • (12) It needed stamina, ice-in-the-veins bravery, cunning, cool judgment and brute determination.
  • (13) So much so that he ends the press conference with the point, and has a little smile at his own cunning.
  • (14) Running at the visiting defence, N’Doye produced a cunning disguise pass that the Croat Jelavic took in his stride and dispatched past Brad Guzan via a looping deflection.
  • (15) Only Eurovision could offer up such a song: a plea for ethnic tolerance, cunningly disguised as an Abba track with the offcuts from a pantomime.
  • (16) Anyway, back to these fraudsters, who are the least costly element of a leaky system, but nevertheless transfix the political imagination as though they were masterminds of cunning and audacity, whose long game were to destroy the fabric of society altogether.
  • (17) Steve Hilton's cunning plan to abolish all consumer, employment and maternity rights got a dusty answer, while his green passions are at least tolerated.
  • (18) Former schemes were tiny but this one is mammoth, the debt kept cunningly off the public borrowing books (which the Office for National Statistics allowed; it's said the Treasury was amazed).
  • (19) It turned out that the Square Mile is cunningly designed so as to have almost nowhere for such groups to gather, so the protesters ended up by the skirts of St Paul's.
  • (20) Undercover underwear What do you do when you develop a cunning remote-monitoring system to track soldiers’ performance in the field, but they don’t want to wear a clumsy chest strap, or forget to wear the wristband?