What's the difference between cunning and wit?

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?

Wit


Definition:

  • (inf.) of Wit
  • (n.) To know; to learn.
  • (v.) Mind; intellect; understanding; sense.
  • (v.) A mental faculty, or power of the mind; -- used in this sense chiefly in the plural, and in certain phrases; as, to lose one's wits; at one's wits' end, and the like.
  • (v.) Felicitous association of objects not usually connected, so as to produce a pleasant surprise; also. the power of readily combining objects in such a manner.
  • (v.) A person of eminent sense or knowledge; a man of genius, fancy, or humor; one distinguished for bright or amusing sayings, for repartee, and the like.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) 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.
  • (2) We are already witnessing a wholly understandable uprising of protest.
  • (3) Among the guests invited to witness the flypast were six second world war RAF pilots, dubbed the “few” by the wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill.
  • (4) Maguire's colleagues rushed to her side, some administering first aid while others held her attacker, witnesses said.
  • (5) That’s when you heard the ‘boom’.” Teto Wilson also claimed to have witnessed the shooting, posting on Facebook on Sunday morning that he and some friends had been at the Elk lodge, outside which the shooting took place.
  • (6) Any party or witness is entitled to use Welsh in any magistrates court in Wales without prior notice.
  • (7) Solzhenitsyn was acknowledged as a "truth-teller" and a witness to the cruelties of Stalinism of unusual power and eloquence.
  • (8) Unfortunately, under the Faustian pact we have witnessed a double whammy: fiscal policy being used to reduce government spending when the economy is already depressed.
  • (9) John Carver witnessed signs of much-needed improvement from the visitors in a purposeful spell either side of the interval but it was not enough to prevent a fifth successive Premier League defeat.
  • (10) Two officers who witnessed the shooting of unarmed 43-year-old Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati will not face criminal charges, despite seemingly corroborating a false claim that DuBose’s vehicle dragged officer Ray Tensing before he was fatally shot.
  • (11) He could be the target of more punishing wit, as when Michael Foot, noting a tendency to be tougher abroad than at home, called him "a belligerent Bertie Wooster without even a Jeeves to restrain him."
  • (12) Thanks to the groundbreaking technology and heavy investment of a new breed of entertainment retailers offering access services, we are witnessing a revolution in the entertainment industry, benefitting consumers, creators and content owners alike.” ERA acts as a forum for the physical and digital retail sectors of music, and represents over 90% of the of the UK’s entertainment retail market.
  • (13) The observed complications were post-labor hemorrhage (3.1%), polysystolia (4.1%) and vomiting (5.2%), without significant difference with the witness group.
  • (14) At one, in the Gun and Dog pub in Leeds on Tuesday, a witness described how the meeting descended into chaos when one of the rebels smashed a glass and threatened to attack Griffin supporter Mark Collett.
  • (15) My mother told me not to cry.” He has since witnessed the transformation of Hagere Selam.
  • (16) Imagine witnessing a game of bridge being played in the Cabinet War Rooms in the year 2072 AD.
  • (17) The contrast between the two plans is best witnessed from the small park between the Trade Centre and the 1930s National Assembly, one of the few survivors of the earthquake.
  • (18) Results indicate that 75% of the participating boys and 10% of participating girls had witnessed the shooting, stabbing, robbing, or killing of another person in their own lives.
  • (19) FWA chairman Andy Dunn said: "Those members who have been fortunate enough to be working at a match involving Luis Suárez have witnessed an astonishing talent first-hand.
  • (20) The main pregnancy resolution was vaginal via; only 6.3% of the study group subjected cesarean section against 10.3% of the witness group and the most frecuent indication was stationary dilation (1 and 8 cases respectively).

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