What's the difference between sleight and sly?

Sleight


Definition:

  • (n.) Cunning; craft; artful practice.
  • (n.) An artful trick; sly artifice; a feat so dexterous that the manner of performance escapes observation.
  • (n.) Dexterous practice; dexterity; skill.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Although it's presented as a boys' story, rooted in historical reality, it also demonstrates Stevenson's artistic sleight-of-hand.
  • (2) No, not Gordon Brown, although there were times when today's sleights of hand and burying of bad news had strong echoes of the clunking fist at its worst.
  • (3) Bewley lifts the lid on a world of sleight of hand, massage and plain lying by omission in the world of fertility statistics.
  • (4) This sort of sleight of hand is what we lawyers call " sharp practice ".
  • (5) Infantile delivery also frequently serves to take the curse off self-publicity; sleight of hand for those who find "my programme is on BBC2 tonight" too presumptuous and exposing, and prefer to cower behind the low-status imbecility of "I done rote a fingy for da tellybox!"
  • (6) A fluorescent analog of phosphatidylethanolamine [palmitoyl-C6-NBD)-PE), which also exhibits transmembrane movement at the plasma membrane at 7 degrees C (Sleight, R. G., and Pagano, R. E. (1985) J. Biol.
  • (7) At times it has obfuscated its message on the bailout but Syriza's most impressive sleight of hand has been its attempt to appeal to incompatible constituencies.
  • (8) The tone is set once the charlady answers the telephone with the words: “Hello, the drawing room of Lady Muldoon’s country residence one morning in early spring.” The critics first comment on the action from the stalls and then, by a Pirandellian sleight of hand, become a part of it.
  • (9) He predicted: "There is a real, real danger that the Liberal Democrats could implode – their role has been a sleight of hand."
  • (10) The Institute for Fiscal Studies played a blinder, as usual, pointing out the Treasury's sleights of hand and misrepresentations.
  • (11) Instead, as we have reported, HMRC is using sleight of hand to release information about VAT to credit reference agencies who have been disguised as contractors to avoid confidentiality law.
  • (12) In England, unless championed by Labour, they can just as easily be harnessed by Ukip – or used to justify a Tory constitutional sleight of hand that could derail a Labour government and leave Liverpool and Newcastle at the mercy of a Farageist southern suburbia.
  • (13) Had the Elysée's salles des fêtes been packed to the ornate rafters and chandeliers with French media, the sleight of hand might have worked.
  • (14) Green campaigners believe the Lib Dems have been persuaded into allowing higher energy bills to flow into increased profits for nuclear companies by a sleight of hand that lets ministers disguise nuclear subsidies as support for "low-carbon power".
  • (15) Osborne's budget was a lesson in sleight of hand Read more The moment was ripe for someone – perhaps a child, as in the fable – to stand up and point out that the emperors of the Treasury and the OBR have no clothes; that all these predictions, while not exactly worthless, can’t be relied on to last five weeks let alone five years.
  • (16) Another tweeted that BGT’s producers should have informed viewers about the sleight of hand before the public decided who to vote for in the final.
  • (17) Thailand’s friends abroad should not be fooled by this obvious sleight of hand … that effectively provides unlimited and unaccountable powers.” In particular, unlawful detentions of civilian opponents looked set to increase, he suggested .
  • (18) Scrutiny of the documents suggests it is based on three key assumptions – and one sleight of hand.
  • (19) Chinese hamster ovary cells maintained in culture medium supplemented with complete serum can grow at nearly normal rates in the presence of phospholipase C for many generations, even though the treatment enhances turnover of cellular phosphatidylcholine (R. Sleight and C. Kent (1983) J. Biol.
  • (20) "Britain's young people who do not have the skills they need for work should be in training, not on benefits," said Miliband, in a neat bit of sleight of hand that lays the lack of employment in this age group firmly at their own door.

Sly


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Dexterous in performing an action, so as to escape notice; nimble; skillful; cautious; shrewd; knowing; -- in a good sense.
  • (v. t.) Artfully cunning; secretly mischievous; wily.
  • (v. t.) Done with, and marked by, artful and dexterous secrecy; subtle; as, a sly trick.
  • (v. t.) Light or delicate; slight; thin.
  • (adv.) Slyly.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) High pressure liquid chromatography combined with radioimmunoassay showed marked heterogeneity of SPLI and SLI.
  • (2) Evidence of the industrial panic surfaced at Digital Britain when Sly Bailey, the chief executive of Trinity Mirror, suggested that national newspaper websites that chased big online audiences have "devalued news" , whatever that might mean.
  • (3) "It is incredibly hard work," she says with a sly grin.
  • (4) The concentration of somatostatin-like immunoreactivity (SLI) was determined by specific radioimmunoassay in the cerebroventricular fluid of patients with tumours of the basal midline and compared to findings in patients with multiple sclerosis.
  • (5) These neurons are known to also contain somatostatin-like immunoreactivity (SLI).
  • (6) "Everyone calls him the Socialist Worker Padre," one bland senior cleric told me with a sly and dismissive laugh.
  • (7) Minimal pairs differing only in the voicing feature of the initial consonant were produced by four SLI and four language-matched NL children.
  • (8) We studied the effect of tetrahydroaminoacridine (THA) on cerebrospinal fluid somatostatin-like immunoreactivity (CSF-SLI) in probable Alzheimer disease (AD) patients (n = 20) who took part in an open THA treatment trial.
  • (9) The characteristics of children with specific language impairment (SLI) attending four language units in the north-west of England are examined.
  • (10) This work was undertaken to study the effect of glucose on pancreaticoduodenal and peripheral venous somatostatin-like immunoreactivity (SLI) levels in dogs.
  • (11) Sly, underhanded, contemptuous, mendacious, double-dealing, cheating democracy.
  • (12) Grigson is clearly relishing the task ahead, having already toured major investors and playing a key role in the pay dispute, which ultimately resulted in Sly Bailey stepping down after a decade running the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, People and 140 regional newspapers late on Thursday.
  • (13) The most conspicuous feature of the elution profiles was the preponderance of the peak coeluting with synthetic somatostatin-14, whereas the peaks comigrating with synthetic somatostatin-28 and attributable to precursor-like SLI represented only minor or trace amounts of total immunoreactivity.
  • (14) Yet the whole thing was sly and subversive, for it whispered, see, see what you have been missing.
  • (15) The provision of structure in the form of thematically related toy sets, instructions, and modeling did not reduce the discrepancy between demonstrated play behaviors of toddlers with SLI-E and their normally developing peers.
  • (16) SLI levels were found to be significantly lower on day 4 after delivery, compared to 3-4 months later.
  • (17) There was a weak but statistically significant correlation between SLI values in CSF and neuropsychological test scores.
  • (18) The ME was microdissected for determination of SLI content.
  • (19) Sly Bailey, the chief executive of Trinity Mirror, said that the company made £25m in savings and would have increased adjusted operating profits year-on-year if not for a £22m rise in newsprint prices.
  • (20) A great interindividual variation in SLI levels was observed (a range of 0.02 to 5.30 nanograms per milligram of weight).

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