(a.) Out of a straight line; winding; varying from directness; as, a devious path or way.
(a.) Going out of the right or common course; going astray; erring; wandering; as, a devious step.
Example Sentences:
(1) Cholecystectomy provided successful treatment in three of the four patients but the fourth was too ill to undergo an operation; in general, definitive treatment is cholecystectomy, together with excision of the fistulous tract if this takes a direct path through the abdominal wall from the gallbladder, or curettage if the course is devious.
(2) He told the court: “We have been trying at the bar to imagine whether we can think of any other group of legal or natural persons, terrorist suspects, arms dealers, Jews, in respect of whose evidence one might even begin to think that one could tenably say, ‘Well, of course, in looking at this evidence I have been very careful because I know from the past that these people are a bit devious and a bit unworthy, and the only thing they’re really interested in is subverting public health.’ ” Yet last week’s judgment, running to 1,000 paragraphs, confirmed in excoriating detail just how determined big tobacco has been down the decades to achieve precisely this goal.
(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) In the interim, Gough had also played a devious old friend of the Doctor – by now, Peter Davison – in the 1983 story Arc of Infinity.
(5) Ideally they should also possess the sort of clipped tones that make vulgarities sound like Virgil and the sort of wardrobe that dresses up deviousness as a gentleman's sport.
(6) You're a devious villain conducting the perfect crime, like the dashing guest star in the opening scene of a classic Columbo.
(7) This is in part due to planned obsolescence – a devious ploy by manufacturers bolstered by marketing strategies to make us fall out of love with a product hastily.
(8) In the maximum likelihood (ML) method for estimating a molecular phylogenetic tree, the pattern of nucleotide substitutions for computing likelihood values is assumed to be simpler than that of the actual evolutionary process, simply because the process, considered to be quite devious, is unknown.
(9) But all of these arguments, Anderson implied, fell on deaf ears because of what he called the “myth of tobacco exceptionalism” – the view that manufacturers are “uniquely devious”.
(10) "While millions of working people are either without work, or having their pay frozen or slashed, Britain's boardrooms are finding even more devious ways to squeeze even more cash from their companies," said the general secretary, Len McCluskey.
(11) But, at heart, Harper’s team are not that different from politicians across the developed world who have discovered that democracy is a pretty sweet theory but that, in reality, if you want to get hold of power and use it, there are all kinds of devious moves available that have very little to do with that antique idea.
(12) These presentations of the devious ease with which the Vatican dissembles also clearly serve as a metaphor for the Catholic church’s unwillingness to address the scandals of priestly paedophilia.
(13) They can change their name but it’s the same thing – if people are wise, they will see it is the devious politics of the hard left.” In response to complaints about the email, a Corbyn campaign spokesman said: “At this crucial time for our party and our country, it is essential that we bring Labour together.
(14) During the trial's closing arguments Donald's lawyer, Max Blecher, accused Shelly of an "unconscionable", "devious" and "invidious" scheme to strip him of the Clippers.
(15) There aren’t enough Trotskyists, entryists, devious Tories and random renegades to explain such an overwhelming victory.
(16) The mining magnate says Brough, who is contesting former Speaker Peter Slipper's Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher, has been devious over the James Ashby affair.
(17) In the UK, the doughty chair of the public accounts committee, Margaret Hodge, investigating Google for tax avoidance has denounced the firm as "devious", "calculating … and manipulating".
(18) The 12 Years a Slave star is perhaps Lee’s most high-profile find , but others who have found success from the Showcases include Randall Park who stars in the upcoming series Fresh off the Boat, as well as Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams, Chadwick Boseman (42) and Dania Ramirez (Devious Maids).
(19) The book described Charles’s court as so riven by infighting that it is known by insiders as “Wolf Hall”, after Hilary Mantel’s fictional portrayal of Thomas Cromwell’s devious machinations on behalf of King Henry VIII.
(20) The model stipulates that given exposure to sustained aversive maternal control and a maternal communication style which is subtle and devious, the child comes to adapt with approach, stratagem-based behaviours and heightened vigilance for evaluative information (i.e.
Shifty
Definition:
(a.) Full of, or ready with, shifts; fertile in expedients or contrivance.
Example Sentences:
(1) Lucas’s surname is Madikane ; ultra-conservative Brian was shifty around the couple.
(2) Across town via Royston Vasey, Steve Pemberton is Kevin Weatherill, a man colluding with some shifty types to kidnap his boss's daughter.
(3) There was Nick Griffin himself, described by my self-selected group of Twitter friends as: "incoherent", "shifty", an "arse" and more.
(4) Such process of "archaeology" seems to be the only suitable to supply us the cipher-key of the ambiguous, shifty character of oxygen, and entrust us with a cultural patrimony being unique as it is spendable in an immediate clinical future.
(5) The war's growing unpopularity meant there was less tolerance for shifty allies like Karzai perceived to have a foot in both camps.
(6) This suggests that the "shifty" tRNAs proposed by Jacks et al.
(7) This overlap region includes a "shifty" heptanucleotide, followed by a highly structured region that may contain a pseudoknot.
(8) In the case of one shifty sequence, frameshifting promoted by lysyl-tRNA limitation occurs at the sequence AAG C and is due to rightward movement of the ribosome so as to read the AGC triplet overlapping the hungry codon from the right.
(9) Another recent critics' favourite which might not have got a look-in elsewhere is Eran Creevy's Shifty, a fusion of kitchen-sink drama and urban crime thriller.
(10) One of the parallels between August 2007 and August 2011 is the shiftiness of those running the show, a sense that they are not letting on all they know for fear of creating more panic.
(11) 12.37pm: The Guardian's deputy editor, Ian Katz , has just tweeted: Cameron looking staggeringly shifty about extent to which he discussed Coulson appointment with Rebekah Brooks #Leveson — ian katz (@iankatz1000) June 14, 2012 12.39pm: Cameron says he asked Coulson about phone hacking in a face-to-face meeting in the Norman Shaw building in Westminster, at which he sought assurances from Coulson.
(12) The presence of a "shifty" heptanucleotide sequence in this region and a downstream RNA pseudoknot structure indicate that ORF1b is probably expressed by ribosomal frameshifting.
(13) Self-regarding, clever, shifty Boris must be counted among those many voters who have said since Friday: “I only voted leave because I assumed remain would win.” He deserves to be made to sweep up the glass after the Brexit party, but it’s not his style.
(14) He tries to look and sound sincere, and perhaps he is; but he comes across all the same as rather nervous and shifty.
(15) In almost all cases a stable hairpin was predicted four to nine nucleotides downstream of the shifty heptanucleotide.
(16) Dare I ask the bookseller (who has probably recognised the shifty look in my eyes) if not, why not?
(17) They still loved him as they never loved Tony Blair, who also got stuck with the shifty label.
(18) This is not a strong, confident government, it is a shifty, grubby regime, tin-eared to the views of our friends and brainwashed by the Ukip world view.
(19) He certainly came across as an uninspiring and slightly shifty bureaucrat, concerned more about his ambitions than anything else – but, then again, that’s pretty much the persona with which we’re familiar from his parliamentary career.
(20) The lavender, reclining on a chaise longue is looking shifty and smoking a cigarette.