What's the difference between cunning and skill?

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?

Skill


Definition:

  • (n.) Discrimination; judgment; propriety; reason; cause.
  • (n.) Knowledge; understanding.
  • (n.) The familiar knowledge of any art or science, united with readiness and dexterity in execution or performance, or in the application of the art or science to practical purposes; power to discern and execute; ability to perceive and perform; expertness; aptitude; as, the skill of a mathematician, physician, surgeon, mechanic, etc.
  • (n.) Display of art; exercise of ability; contrivance; address.
  • (n.) Any particular art.
  • (v. t.) To know; to understand.
  • (v. i.) To be knowing; to have understanding; to be dexterous in performance.
  • (v. i.) To make a difference; to signify; to matter; -- used impersonally.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Hoursoglou thinks a shortage of skilled people with a good grounding in core subjects such as maths and science is a potential problem for all manufacturers.
  • (2) Training in social skills specific to fostering intimacy is suggested as a therapeutic step, and modifications to the social support measure for future use discussed.
  • (3) But if you want to sustain a long-term relationship, it's important to try to develop other erotic interests and skills, because most partners will expect and demand that.
  • (4) It appeared that ratings by supervisors were influenced primarily by the interpersonal skills of the residents and secondarily by ability.
  • (5) In a poll before the debate, 48% predicted that Merkel, who will become Europe's longest serving leader if re-elected on 22 September, would emerge as the winner of the US-style debate, while 26% favoured Steinbruck, a former finance minister who is known for his quick-wit and rhetorical skills, but sometimes comes across as arrogant.
  • (6) The skill of the surgeon was not a significant factor in maternal deaths.
  • (7) "Runners, for instance, need a high level of running economy, which comes from skill acquisition and putting in the miles," says Scrivener, "But they could effectively ease off the long runs and reduce the overall mileage by introducing Tabata training.
  • (8) The need for follow-up studies is stressed to allow assessment of the effectiveness of the intervention and to search for protective factors, successful coping skills, strategies and adaptational resources.
  • (9) Independent t test results indicated nurses assigned more importance to psychosocial support and skills training than did patients; patients assigned more importance to sensation--discomfort than did nurses.
  • (10) Both microcomputer use and tracking patient care experience are technical skills similar to learning any medical procedure with which physicians are already familiar.
  • (11) They have already missed the critical periods in language learning and thus are apt to remain severely depressed in language skills at best.
  • (12) A teaching package is described for teaching interview skills to large blocks of medical students whilst on their psychiatric attachment.
  • (13) The intervention represented, for the intervention team, an opportunity to learn community organization and community education skills through active participation in the community.
  • (14) In contrast, children who initially have good verbal imitation skills apparently show gains in speech following simultaneous communication training alone.
  • (15) There is extant a population of subjects who have average or better than average interpretive reading skills as measured by standardized tests but who read slowly and inefficiently.
  • (16) To not use those skills would be like Gigi Buffon not using his enormous hands.
  • (17) The focus will be on assessment of the gravid woman's anxiety levels and coping skills.
  • (18) The functional role of corticocortical input projecting to the motor cortex in learning motor skills was investigated by training 3 cats with and without the projection area.
  • (19) Gauging the proper end point of methohexital administration is accomplished through skilled observation of the patient.
  • (20) Keepy-uppys should be a simple skill for a professional footballer, so when Tom Ince clocked himself in the face with the ball while preparing to take a corner early in the second half, even he couldn't help but laugh.