What's the difference between conniving and cunning?

Conniving


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Connive

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Despite his advocacy on behalf of leftists and nationalists, there were those who believed he connived to ensure that the left faction did not get the upper hand in the PAP.
  • (2) Wealthy individuals and religious foundations in Saudi Arabia , Kuwait, Qatar and elsewhere in the Gulf have channelled millions of dollars to the anti-Assad opposition, though it is not clear with what degree of official connivance.
  • (3) So while the Turkish parliament congratulated itself on a long night’s defence of democracy, many wonder why its members connived in the decline of the rule of law.
  • (4) They should never have connived in the absurd policy of allowing housing benefit to soar to pay ever-higher rents for those on benefit or in low-paid jobs and simultaneously permitting council houses to be sold without their replacement.
  • (5) – with the connivance of the Sun, a headline on whose front page reading THE TRUTH is in any circumstances beyond satire.
  • (6) Her summary of the issues underscored several key points, among them the reality that the publishers were as conniving as Apple, but that they perceived Apple's market power too strong to challenge.
  • (7) According to Robert Gates, the former US defence secretary, Washington was so keen to oust the Afghan president that officials connived in delaying an Afghan presidential election in 2009 and then tried to manipulate the outcome in a "clumsy and failed putsch".
  • (8) On Monday the Russian foreign ministry denounced the lawlessness it said “now rules in eastern regions of Ukraine as a result of the actions of fighters of the so-called Right Sector, with the full connivance” of Ukraine’s new authorities.
  • (9) Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader whose trial for the Bosnian genocide began last month in The Hague, lived openly for years in Serbian army barracks with the connivance of sympathetic senior officers.
  • (10) It is a story of deceit that has left thousands of British refugees living in misery for the past 40 years, exiled from their island home by a conniving and unrepentant government."
  • (11) Horman had spotted US warships off the Chilean coast at Valparaiso shortly after the coup and had believed this showed signs of American connivance.
  • (12) This process of polarisation and mutual alienation culminated last Friday with Obama’s active connivance in the passing of a landmark UN security council resolution.
  • (13) A lot of people, including the opposition, have connived in giving this a humanitarian gloss.
  • (14) "The mafia that invests, that launders money, that therefore has the real power, is the mafia which has got rich for years from its connivance with the church," said Gratteri.
  • (15) A third actor, the one who plays the conniving lady's maid Sarah O'Brien, has now left the cast too.
  • (16) But abuse and criminal activity on this sort of scale cannot possibly happen without passive connivance from the very top.
  • (17) Meanwhile, in a (seemingly) parallel story, medieval dullard Alaïs must protect the (apparently) same ring from gnashing crusaders and conniving sister Oriane, who is also banging Alaïs's expressionless husband.
  • (18) Israel's new ruler refused to meet Arafat, whom he charged with duplicity and connivance in murder.
  • (19) The newspaper said it had found evidence of widespread theft of ivory “perpetuated by [Uganda Wildlife Authority] staff” who connive with wildlife traffickers.
  • (20) The Liberal Democrats have disowned their former icon, Sir Cyril Smith, amid evidence of appalling and repeated sexual abuse of children, as a new controversy raged over allegations that police, spies and politicians connived in an establishment cover-up of his activities.

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?