What's the difference between cunning and shrewd?

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?

Shrewd


Definition:

  • (superl.) Inclining to shrew; disposing to curse or scold; hence, vicious; malicious; evil; wicked; mischievous; vexatious; rough; unfair; shrewish.
  • (superl.) Artful; wily; cunning; arch.
  • (superl.) Able or clever in practical affairs; sharp in business; astute; sharp-witted; sagacious; keen; as, a shrewd observer; a shrewd design; a shrewd reply.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The crucial additional feature of his nature, however, was that the apparently guileless charm was accompanied by a razor-sharp shrewdness.
  • (2) The brewer does not think the pipeline will pay back in less than 20 years, but it appears to be a shrewd commercial move.
  • (3) From child migrants to the doctors’ dispute, principled compromise should be the mantra of the shrewd politician.
  • (4) Wilson, though, quick to adopt new personas, and adapt to new circumstances, adored the attention, and shrewdly exploited his role as local minor celebrity when it came to what he was really interested in - helping Manchester to recreate itself as a major city, with its radical, inventive and progressive traditions intact.
  • (5) She pursued many reforms with energy, intelligence and political shrewdness.
  • (6) Raynor, however, had shrewdly appreciated what England's tactically naive Walter Winterbottom had disastrously not; that it was Hidegkuti, in his deep-lying position, who made the Hungarian wheels turn.
  • (7) Most of his £3bn is based on his shrewd purchase of BHS in 2000.
  • (8) There were occasional bursts of vivacity: the comment, when the Tory government economised on a booster station for the BBC World Service, that "Nation shall murmur unto nation"; shrewd opposition to entry into the ERM "at an unsustainable rate"; and an early warning to Nigel Lawson, in 1988, of the looming economic crisis.
  • (9) He remained an admirably efficient analyst of certain plays and human motivation, and a shrewd guide for those in search of something to go to.
  • (10) He admitted that he has "some big decisions to make" but was too shrewd to act on the spur of the moment, when his mind was still clouded with a disappointment that will linger for a long while yet.
  • (11) But there is a proviso: the region's youth bulge came hand-in-hand with high-quality education that prepared a generation for the marketplace – as well as shrewd economic policies that widened that marketplace in the first place.
  • (12) A shrewd former military officer, Sarkisian, 61, has been in charge of the small landlocked nation of 2.9 million since winning a vote in 2008.
  • (13) Acute came from acus , Latin for needle, later denoting pointed things, so cute at first meant “acute, clever, keen-witted, sharp, shrewd”, according to the 1933 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which doesn’t suggest the term could describe visual appearance.
  • (14) After repeated failures to clear Cairo’s city centre of street vendors … the Cairo governorate issued a shrewd decree,” wrote Abdelrahman, in an article she published last year.
  • (15) Aided by shrewd trading on capital markets, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs produced strong results this week but Citigroup and Bank of America , both of which have required huge injections of government money for survival, have struggled.
  • (16) Turnover Crystal Palace Accounts of CPFC 2010 Ltd for the year to 30 June 2015 • Ownership Steve Parish and US investors David Blitzer and Joshua Harris control the holding company; individual stakes not disclosed • Turnover 14th highest in League £102m , up from £90m in 2014 • Income Gate and match-day income £10m; Broadcasting & FA and PL income £80m; Sponsorship & advertising £4m; Commercial £5m; Other income £4m • Wage bill 15th highest in League £68m , up from £46m in 2014 • Wages as proportion of turnover 67% • Profit before tax £8m , following £23m profit in 2014 • Net debt £0 (£18m cash in bank) • Interest payable £0 • Highest-paid director No directors were paid State they are in: Palace finished 10th in 2014-15, maintaining their bounce under the shrewd stewardship of Steve Parish and his three fellow investors, all lifelong fans, who bought the club out of administration in 2010.
  • (17) Meanwhile, something’s afoot in the wind at Víctor’s old club, as Barcelona are looking at renewing the contracts of Leo Messi and Neymar , having shrewdly spotted they’re both decent.
  • (18) The recruitment document said, however, that a permanent secretary "balances ministers' or high-level stakeholders' immediate needs or priorities with the long-term aims of their department, being shrewd about what needs to be sacrificed, at what costs and what the implications might be".
  • (19) For a man who’s often considered a shrewd politician, David Cameron lets his government slide into an extraordinary number of damaging and unnecessary conflicts.
  • (20) A large man with a rumpled shirt, snowy beard and hair pulled into a ponytail, the commissioner resembles a hippy Santa Claus but is a tough, shrewd operator.

Words possibly related to "shrewd"