Cunning means clever in a sly, scheming way. A cunning plan, cunning as a fox, a cunning scheme.
It is admiration mixed with distrust: calling a plan cunning praises the cleverness and questions the honesty. As a noun, cunning is the quality itself: low cunning, animal cunning. Note that cunning once meant simply knowledgeable and skilful — a cunning craftsman — with no sly implication at all, and the older sense survives in older texts and in the phrase cunning work.
1adjectivecunningClever in a sly, scheming way.
“The fox came up with a cunning plan to steal the farmer's chickens.”
synonyms: crafty, wily
2nounclevernessSly cleverness.
“She used all her cunning to win the argument without anyone noticing.”
cunning is a quality of sly cleverness.
Also accepted in games: crafty
Middle English cunning is the participle of the old verb can, meaning to know — the same root as ken and know. Somebody cunning was somebody who knew things, and the suspicion attached itself later.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵneh₃-
Middle English
cunning
English, today
cunning
Built from
From Middle English cunning, kunning, konnyng, alteration of earlier Middle English cunninde, kunnende, cunnand, from Old English cunnende, present participle of cunnan (“to know how to, be able to”), equivalent to con + ing. Cognate with Scots cunnand (“cunning”), German könnend (“able to do”), Icelandic kunnandi (“cunning”). More at con, can.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA