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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

guile.

Astuteness often marked by a certain sense of cunning or artful deception.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɡaɪl/
  1. Astuteness often marked by a certain sense of cunning or artful deception.

    uncountable
  2. Deceptiveness, deceit, fraud, duplicity, dishonesty.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

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 wile.

verb/ɡaɪl/
  1. To deceive, beguile, bewile.

Where this word comes from

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 wile.

noun
  1. Obsolete form of gold.

    alt-of · obsolete
  2. Alternative form of gyle.

    alt-of · alternative
Where this word comes from

Variant forms.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.