Other forms: guiles
Guile is cunning used to deceive. Without guile, full of guile, use guile rather than force.
Without guile is the commonest use and is high praise, meaning somebody has no hidden angle. The word is old and slightly literary, and its relative beguile has kept a softer sense: to beguile is to charm rather than to cheat.
1nounguileCunning used to deceive.
“The fox used guile, not strength, to steal the farmer's chickens.”
guile is a cunning.
Old French guile means deception, from a Frankish word for a ruse. Wile is a relative.
Proto-Indo-European
*wey- — to turn, bend
Proto-Germanic
*wīlą
Frankish
*wīl — ruse
Old French
guile — deception
Anglo-Norman
gile
Middle English
gile
English, today
guile
From Middle English gile, from Anglo-Norman gile, from Old French guile (“deception”), from Frankish wīl (“ruse”), from Proto-Germanic wīlą, from Proto-Indo-European wey- (“to turn, bend”). Cognate via Proto-Germanic with a doublet of wile.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA