What's the difference between crafty and cunning?

Crafty


Definition:

  • (a.) Relating to, or characterized by, craft or skill; dexterous.
  • (a.) Possessing dexterity; skilled; skillful.
  • (a.) Skillful at deceiving others; characterized by craft; cunning; wily.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Intricate is the key word, as screwball dialogue plays off layered wordplay, recurring jokes and referential callbacks to build to the sort of laughs that hit you twice: an initial belly laugh followed, a few minutes later, by the crafty laugh of recognition.
  • (2) In defence of Chelsea’s Diego Costa: a crafty, talented street fighter | Chris Taylor Read more Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the clashes involving Chelsea’s Diego Costa Laurent Koscielny of Arsenal at Stamford Bridge.
  • (3) Manchester Craft and Design Centre, 17 Oak Street, Manchester, M4 5JD; Mon-Fri 9am–5pm; 07850 894 752; ministryofcraft.co.uk The Viking Loom Independent but with huge in-store stock, this is an Aladdin's cave of all things crafty.
  • (4) Or on one he didn't like: "I can admire Bacon's crafty use of paint, though it tends towards gimmickry.
  • (5) The news that snails have a homing instinct – which crafty gardeners can overcome by moving them more than 20 metres away from their home patch – may come as a surprise to some.
  • (6) But then the Tory message did none so well either, with a mere 12-seat majority , despite crafty bribery of select demographics, despite a Labour near collapse.
  • (7) This highly energetic picture isn't for everyone – but if you like your whimsical magical realism done up in an antic, extra-crafty style, this may just win your heart.
  • (8) No goals, and frankly not too much excitement either, though the Fulham manager, Martin Jol, did his best by setting off the fire alarms with a crafty cigarette before kick-off.
  • (9) Thor: The Dark World sees Chris Hemsworth's Asgardian prince forced to team up with Tom Hiddleston's crafty Loki to take down an even greater threat, Christopher Eccleston's nefarious Malekith.
  • (10) But in England, conservatism's story remains bound up with the Conservative party – and here, Cameron is found wanting, while Nigel Farage has enough craftiness and political leeway to make hay.
  • (11) North Korea has launched a vitriolic attack on the South Korean president, comparing her to "crafty prostitute" in thrall to her "pimp" Barack Obama.
  • (12) 3D printing has always been at the heart of this colourful, crafty community, empowering the DIY community to design and build their own artwork and products on 3D printers - and helping the technology edge slowly towards the mainstream.
  • (13) Or perhaps they just think that the oath might be taken in the eyes of God, and they’re worried that they’ll be murdered by an errant lightning bolt the second they pop outside for a crafty fag during double geography.
  • (14) Even today, there is a lot that can be lost by a reckless closure decision, and a lot preserved by a crafty innovation or the inter-authority co-operation that many are examining.
  • (15) In a crafty legal move, the conservative justices didn't strike down Section 5 of the law, which creates the system for "preclearance".
  • (16) He gets in some crafty digs at his medical colleagues.
  • (17) If I'm home in Kent, I feed my two spaniels, have a cup of tea and defend my digestive biscuits from being snaffled by my crafty dogs.
  • (18) Manufacturers don’t want shoppers to notice that they are getting less for their money, so they have become particularly crafty at concealing their shrinking products.
  • (19) Humility, he says, is greatly prized by the Masai and their other defining characteristics are also illuminating: “Very nice people, very jovial, very happy, very welcoming, very kind, very courageous … don’t like anyone who is a little bit crafty,” he says.
  • (20) He’s a very interesting person, of course, and crafty: he’s sending troops, but not sending them.

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?