From the Latin Astutia, cunning is the quality of cunning. Someone cunning is a person skilled in deceiving or avoiding deception, or who has the ability to achieve an end in an artificial way. Craftiness may also be an artifice or ruse.
For example: “The deputy showed his cleverness in not answering the more complex questions asked by journalists”, “They tried to scam Don Jacinto, but he had the astuteness necessary to discover the lie in time”, “The captain’s cunning to recover balls in the last quarter of the game was decisive in the result ”.
According to Digopaul, cunning is not usually associated directly with intelligence or academic training, but is understood as the ability of a person to act in a certain way. One who is cunning can warn when he is about to be a victim of a trap or he can develop a ruse himself to deceive others.
Two people knock on the door of a woman’s house and inform her that they are workers of the electricity company and then ask her to allow them to check the installation. The cunning woman informs them that she will call the company to confirm what they say. Faced with this response, the alleged workers leave: they were thieves who tried to deceive the owner of the house.
Cunning can also appear in an athlete who knows how to interpret the plays or the development of the matches to anticipate the competitors. A soccer forward who always manages to get into the proper position on the field to capture rebounds in the opponent’s area and score goals is a canny player.
The concept of cunning is very present in everyday speech, in situations that occur every day, but also in literature, as evidenced by the immense amount of famous phrases and quotes from authors of all times; Let us see some of them below: “Never has anyone of humble state gained great power only through force, but only through cunning”, Niccolo Machiavelli; “The great cunning of the one often consists in the stupidity of the other”, Hugues-Bernard Maret; “Cunning is often annoying like a lamp in a bedroom”, Ludwig Börne.
In popular language, cats are usually associated with cunning, probably because of how attentive they always seem to be to all the phenomena that surround them, as if they wanted to anticipate any unforeseen event so that the surprise does not leave them unhappy and they can react with A good decision.
The cunning is based, precisely, on a great knowledge of the environment; However, this does not mean that it can be acquired on a conscious level, since, as discussed in previous paragraphs, people are born astute. To detect a lie or an attempted scam it is necessary to have a certain experience in dealing with others, to know how to identify certain gestures and inflections of the voice, for example, that human beings often use when they are not sincere.
We all have the possibility of learning to sharpen our senses to reduce the chances of falling into a trap, but cunning is part of the personality, so it conditions those who have it to constantly study others, even if they are not aware of it..
When cunning is used to cause harm to another person, it can be considered a synonym for malice, mischief, wickedness or wickedness. As with intelligence, it is a potential that can be used for any purpose, whether altruistic or selfish, constructive or destructive.
