Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun plural A sly person.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A sly, cunning, or waggish person: also applied to animals.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A humerous appellation for a sly, cunning, or waggish person.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun chiefly UK A person who is clever or shrewd, especially one who is stealthy, manipulative, and rather charming.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a shifty deceptive person

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It was probably the most remarkable political conversion of the era—a Jacksonian politician known as a smooth and calculating slyboots now becoming the leader of a dissident minority bent on destroying the old political order on behalf of a moral conviction.

    A Country of Vast Designs Robert W. Merry 2009

  • It was probably the most remarkable political conversion of the era—a Jacksonian politician known as a smooth and calculating slyboots now becoming the leader of a dissident minority bent on destroying the old political order on behalf of a moral conviction.

    A Country of Vast Designs Robert W. Merry 2009

  • I'm sure they are busy and after all, they would be doing all the work unless you HAVE been training her, you slyboots.

    Would you have labor induced to deliver a 20-week-old fetus that had already died? Ann Althouse 2008

  • “Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to – night and advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots.”

    Bleak House 2007

  • “Still, that old slyboots of a paper-maker must not overreach us; it is time to ask him for something besides promises.”

    Eve and David 2007

  • “He is not named Finot” (finaud, slyboots) “for nothing,” said Lucien.

    A Distinguished Provincial at Paris 2007

  • “Still, that old slyboots of a paper-maker must not overreach us; it is time to ask him for something besides promises.”

    Eve and David 2007

  • And to each of them the little slyboots replied, --

    Stories to Tell to Children Sara Cone Bryant

  • As to the dramatic construction of this Opera, had I not been informed by the kindly playbill that I was seeing _Ivanhoe_, I should never have found it out from the first scene, nor should I have been quite clear about it until the situation where that slyboots _Rebecca_ artfully threatens to chuck herself off from the topmost turret rather than throw herself away on the bad

    Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, February 14, 1891 Various

  • For all their plotting, the audience feels that the old woman is more malevolent than either son or granddaughter, and, after all, the son had worked hard on the home place and the granddaughter, slyboots as she was, undoubtedly was really kind.

    Irish Plays and Playwrights Cornelius Weygandt 1914

Comments

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  • "You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you." Joyce, Ulysses, 15

    January 1, 2008

  • The drongo and fear are in cahoots.
    Beasts flee at the warnings he bruits
    And abandon a meal
    That liar can steal
    To eat at his leisure - slyboots.

    News item: False Alarms: How the Fork-Tailed Drongo Lies its Way into a Free Meal

    May 12, 2014