What's the difference between canny and credulous?

Canny


Definition:

  • (a.) Alt. of Cannei

Example Sentences:

  • (1) That “social enterprise” is just a figleaf, which canny, profit-driven companies can manipulate (Emma Harrison, founder of A4e, famously used to call it a “social purpose company” before the Advertising Standards Authority, of all people, put a stop to it ).
  • (2) It's this canny media awareness that has made obscure Kafranbel one of the unlikely focal points of the revolution.
  • (3) Some gifted and canny writers have made a mint by appealing to teenagers’ sense of anguish and victimhood, the notion that they are forever embattled and persecuted by a rotten world run by authoritarian bozos.
  • (4) However, even if they did tune in for that reason, the quarter-hour breakdown suggests viewers stayed with the debate – a canny bit of scheduling by the broadcaster.
  • (5) But the paper was also canny enough to say the school would be run by evangelical Christian sponsors."
  • (6) Adopted by studio owner Chris Moon and manager Owen Husney, he began plotting his route to a record deal, cultivating a canny air of mystique while playing up to an X-rated image he'd developed after an early immersion in pornography.
  • (7) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Route planners have been canny in their research, judging by the reaction from Mike Herrieven who has run Mere village stores in a wooden cabin at Hoo Green for 20 years, but doesn't expect to last another five.
  • (8) Such gestures reveal a canny politician with a carefully cultivated folksy style.
  • (9) But with Asda, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Ocado and Morrisons vying for our custom, canny shoppers can take advantage of the competition and shave pounds off delivery costs – and even demand free delivery in return for loyalty.
  • (10) These lands once taught Americans what it meant to be independent, stubborn and canny.
  • (11) "The chasm in price between a home inside the M25 and one in the country is at last no longer growing but canny buyers are seeing this and far more inquiries I receive are now from people wanting to cash in on the seemingly ludicrous value of their shoebox of a home and snap up a slice of country living."
  • (12) Her new book, Vagina, is attracting a lot of attention, not least for the title, a canny piece of marketing that she didn't hesitate to use, she says, "because that word is either so taboo or surrounded with negative connotations or draped in shame or medicalised , it's really important to take it back".
  • (13) It was one of those canny-to-the-point-of-irritating references the Old Etonian used to specialise in; a flash of his real-world accreditation.
  • (14) Cameron would have to prove he was being politically canny, inviting Lib Dems into areas that are most likely to explode.
  • (15) He’s also one of the first players to emerge out of the league to become one of its coaches, and his and general manager Garth Lagerwey’s canny use of the draft may well reflect his own experience as a player.
  • (16) It stands as a testament to the boom years of Gaza’s smuggling business with Egypt, when a canny tunnel operator could get rich transporting anything from cars to cattle and household goods.
  • (17) But the Conservatives don’t see what’s happened to their dominance.” Crosby’s British admirers make much of the canny anti-Livingstone campaigns he orchestrated for Boris Johnson in left-leaning London in 2008 and 2012.
  • (18) She had also run a canny campaign in which she toted a rifle and went hunting, but also demonstrated a tenderness towards disadvantaged children.
  • (19) No wonder some canny infants like to play with train sets.
  • (20) One minute later Soldado dragged a shot wide from the edge of the area after being brilliantly set up by Paulinho who, until he was forced off by injury in the second half, was outstanding in midfield, bewildering opponents and delighting the home supporters with canny flicks and festive tricks.

Credulous


Definition:

  • (a.) Apt to believe on slight evidence; easily imposed upon; unsuspecting.
  • (a.) Believed too readily.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) When President Obama stands up and says - as he did when he addressed the nation in February 2011 about Libya - that "the United States will continue to stand up for freedom, stand up for justice, and stand up for the dignity of all people", it should trigger nothing but a scornful fit of laughter, not credulous support (by the way, not that anyone much cares any more, but here's what is happening after the Grand Success of the Libya Intervention: "Tribal and historical loyalties still run deep in Libya, which is struggling to maintain central government control in a country where armed militia wield real power and meaningful systems of law and justice are lacking after the crumbling of Gaddafi's eccentric personal rule").
  • (2) With much of the work supposed to be completed by December, it is stretching credulity to believe that much more than token consultations with patient groups can take place.
  • (3) This leads to the paradoxical result that some of our most famous and successful journalists are also the profession's most credulous sycophants.
  • (4) When 11,000 jobs and a lot of pensions are at risk over the collapse of the ailing store group from which he extracted £586 m, let’s not waste any more time on King Phil (I’ve informally stripped him of his knighthood), his hurt feelings or embarrassingly vulgar yachts, except to say that – yet again – that Tony Blair was a credulous sucker for a rich man with tax-shy habits.
  • (5) It doesn't exactly stretch credulity, however, to recognize that banks provide bonuses to the best producers – whether they produce derivatives, mortgages or foreclosures.
  • (6) Given the inertia on even the most modest legislative response to the mass murder of schoolchildren, those still credulous enough to believe that our governance is representative of popular will are either Barnum-sized suckers, or worse, tacit participants in tragedies soon to come.
  • (7) Credulous voters will agree and feel placated, but in actuality, such measures will make little if any difference.
  • (8) The Crown Prosecution Service should not be so credulous in future.” But the CPS expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the trial.
  • (9) I think he’s a dangerous manchild with an army of credulous misogynists at his disposal.
  • (10) Pretending that the government's current forecasts and plans are certain and reliable, when the ones made only three years ago turned out to be anything but, stretches credulity.
  • (11) What we see is not meritocracy at work at all, but a wealth grab by a nepotistic executive class that sets its own salaries, tests credulity with its ridiculous demands, and discovers that credulity is an amenable customer.
  • (12) The boy insists he is not among the stone-throwers, an assertion that stretches credulity.
  • (13) It strains credulity to accept that a secretary of state who handles all her communications on a home-brewed server never passed classified information,” Fiorina said.
  • (14) Hague's campaign included parading Kaminski before the Jewish Chronicle and the more credulous blogger Iain Dale at the party conference: Dale's interview is reprinted across five pages in Total Politics , of which Lord Ashcroft owns 25%.
  • (15) The pirate's credulity regarding the US authorities' bogus ransom negotiations may make for a happy ending, but it's also the moment when America's superpower seems almost tragically all-consuming.
  • (16) Kiev's police chief later claimed that he ordered the assault, but that strains credulity.
  • (17) That suggestion, which always appeared unsatisfactory, now stretches the bounds of credulity.
  • (18) Equally credulous were those who, on the Monday evening, circulated reports that rioters had broken into London Zoo – thanks largely to a single, poorly-lit picture of what appears to be a tiger on a stairwell , with the irresistible subject line: "Oh my god – reports of tigers roaming around Primrose Hill."
  • (19) But the manipulation does not just tell us how sly operators view the credulous masses, but how they see themselves.
  • (20) Ghosts are not phantoms floating on the periphery of village life, the concern only of children and the credulous.