wily

Etymology

It is formed from English wile + -y.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The Middle English adjective is wili, also wilie and whili.^[7][8] The noun goes back to late Old English wil (“a trick”),^[8][9][5] which is of uncertain origin: it may come from an unrecorded Old North French *wile, the counterpart of guile,^[8][9][5] or directly from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse vél (“trick, craft, fraud”).^[8][10][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a person, full of tricks and cunning: about 1330 in Mannyng's Chronicle,^[2] and in the same period in a life of Saint Katherine, where an emperor "ful wiley was".^[7] Barnhart dates the adjective to before 1325, Etymonline to about 1300, and Hoad to the 13th century.^[9][8][10]

Semantic evolution

Applied at first to people and animals, as in a Middle English werewolf that "was wily",^[7][2] it spread to actions and tricks by the late 14th century,^[8][7] and to personal attributes in Lydgate about 1407.^[2] It could be close to praise: the Middle English Dictionary also records "shrewd, clever", and Chaucer pairs "wily and wys" in the Monk's Tale.^[7] Chaucer has the word three times.^[11] In Middle English it also served as a noun for a wily person or animal, and until the early 17th century as an adverb.^[2][7][4] The 16th century had wily-pie, a cunning fellow,^[8] and wily beguile is an archaic slang term for a wily person or action.^[4] Johnson (1755) glossed it "cunning; sly; full of stratagem; fraudulent", and his 1773 edition added "mischievously artful".^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1330 – of a person or animal, crafty, cunning.^[2][7]
• c. 1400 – noun, a wily person or animal (obsolete by about 1460), in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.^[2]
• c. 1400 – adverb, craftily (obsolete by 1623), in Cleanness.^[2][7]
• c. 1407 – of personal attributes and actions, in Lydgate.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Full of wiles; crafty, sly or cunning: The wily goat slipped past every fence we built.^[3][13][2]
2. Showing artful cunning; clever or subtle: It was a wily move to ask for less than she wanted.^[3][2]

Noun

1. (obsolete, c. 1400–1460) A wily person or animal.^[2][7]

Adverb

1. (obsolete, c. 1400–1623) Craftily, cunningly.^[2][7][4]

Word family

• wilily
• wiliness
• overwily
• unwily

Related words

• wile
• guile

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
8. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
10. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins