Adjective
a canny card player, good at psyching out his opponents
warm and canny under the woolen bedcovers, we didn't mind the chilly Scottish nights
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Adjective
Nice white parents enroll their children; protests break out when a bougie juice bar threatens to replace an old-school deli; and Principal Ava (Janelle James), always a canny operator, helps her team blackmail the developer out of some fancy new computers for the kids.—Lorraine Ali, Los Angeles Times, 17 Jan. 2025 That said, while his canny efforts to sidestep any potential controversies are understandable, the cautious version of Brady always seems weirdly at odds with the famously competitive Brady of old.—Anthony Crupi, Sportico.com, 5 Feb. 2025 Still, his detractors praise him as a canny operator.—Christian Edwards, CNN, 2 Feb. 2025 The more important thing for now is to understand the canny way that Cisco is positioning itself in the AI market, especially for enterprise customers.—Patrick Moorhead, Forbes, 14 Jan. 2025 See All Example Sentences for canny
Word History
Etymology
Adjective
originally Scots & regional northern English, going back to early Scots, "free from risk, sagacious, prudent, cautious," probably from can "ability" (noun derivative of cancan entry 1) + -y-y entry 1
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