What's the difference between cunning and tricky?

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?

Tricky


Definition:

  • (a.) Given to tricks; practicing deception; trickish; knavish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Consoles are even more widespread in Japan, of course, but for many, finding the time and space to play in comfort is tricky.
  • (2) For an industry built on selling ersatz rebellion to teenagers, finding the moral high ground was always going to be tricky.
  • (3) Updated at 2.53pm GMT 2.48pm GMT 'Tricky job, well done' - IoD Graeme Leach , chief economist at the Institute of Directors, said: This was a tricky job, well done by George Osborne.
  • (4) Bloody odd combination but those Orange Foam Headphones would blast those magnificent records into my developing brain over and over again" chernypyos – Björk's Human Behavior and Sinead O'Connor's Fire On Babylon: "bjork's 'human behavior' and sinead o'connor's "fire on babylon" oddly stick in my head from that one evening walking in the woods, breathing the damp air, and feeling pleasantly invisible" Pyromancer – REM – Automatic for the People Blood Sugar Sex Magic Pearl Jam - Vs RATM's first album Portishead Maxinquaye by Tricky Manic Street Preachers – Gold Against the Soul Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream "I used to go to the local library and take out a CD (50p for 3 weeks!
  • (5) Like Glover and Stanning before them, they went out and did what they have done all season, ignoring another tricky wind which caused a brief delay earlier in the morning.
  • (6) So, in The Devil Wears Prada , the ferocious magazine chief played by Meryl Streep is beset by secret misery: unfaithful husband, tricky kids, wig issues.
  • (7) Specialist learning disability liaison nurse Jainab Desai is making meticulous checks of the complex arrangements to receive a tricky patient with learning disabilities, with staff of the day surgery unit at Royal Bolton hospital.
  • (8) "I think it's tricky because as an industry, the stakes are quite high and people hire people they already know," she says.
  • (9) He stares down Cain, and works the count full after laying off some tricky pitches outside the zone that were trailing away from the righty.
  • (10) "It's like revisiting an old world," says Topley-Bird, who is droll and spacey where Tricky is hyperactively chatty.
  • (11) It is understood the Irish newspaper publisher will have to decide whether to sub-let the space to another business, which could be tricky in the depressed economic climate, or pay to break the contract.
  • (12) It can be tricky to move on from your youth, if your youth is what other people want to hear about.
  • (13) "There are plenty of things she can wax lyrical about without getting into tricky areas: the upcoming first world war centenary, the need for a more global outlook in the economy, the inspiring achievements of British parliamentary democracy."
  • (14) We still had to settle the tricky question of scale.
  • (15) She looks panicky for a moment, at the prospect of a particularly tricky financial poser...
  • (16) "This would require them to prove that YouView is dominant, which could be tricky, given the state of the market," said Becket McGrath, a partner at law firm Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge.
  • (17) The tricky thing here is that with these states, the non-nuclear powers might not know where that line might be drawn for the states with the bomb.
  • (18) Sleep easy Getting enough sleep can be tricky, especially near exams, but there are loads of things you can do to get better sleep and every little bit helps.
  • (19) Mancini joked that he hoped it was Everton rather than Moyes who City found tricky.
  • (20) "I start work in September full-time, so it may be a bit more tricky to keep up the sessions, but if I have to come after work instead I will.