Crafty

How to spell crafty

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce crafty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does crafty mean?

1. adjectiveClever at getting what one wants through sly or deceptive means.

Crafty in a sentence

• The crafty salesman buried the extra fees deep in the contract.

• She had a crafty plan to win the negotiation without revealing her budget.

Where does crafty come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows out of the Old English noun cræft, which originally meant strength, power, or skill, and only later narrowed toward the idea of a learned trade or handiwork (the sense we still hear in 'arts and crafts'). The same Germanic root sits behind the modern German Kraft, meaning force or power, a relative that reveals how much heftier the early meaning was. Adding the adjective suffix -y produced 'crafty', recorded from around the 1200s, at first simply meaning skilful or learned. Over the centuries the flattering sense of clever workmanship curdled into the slightly disapproving sense we use today: sly, scheming, and good at getting one's way through trickery. The spelling stays mercifully regular, since 'crafty' is just the familiar word 'craft' with a -y stuck on the end.

How the word is built

• craft (Old English cræft: skill, cunning)
• -y (adjective suffix: having the quality of)