These words refer to the clever or perceptive manipulation of facts, appearances or people in order to attain a goal. Guile suggests a wily and shrewd person who uses subterfuge and stratagems to get his way: Don’t try to match your inexperience with the guile of an unscrupulous antique dealer. At its mildest, the word can indicate approval, if not admiration, for a clever person who has learned that indirect means are the only effective ones in some complex situation: the old prospector’s guile in eluding those who tried to track him back to the spot where he had discovered gold. When cunning is used with approval, it puts a greater stress on intellectual prowess than on subtlety born of experience: The detective had used all the cunning at his command to arrive at the murderer’s identity. When it is negative, cunning is a harsher word than guile ; in this case its stress is on ferocity or single-minded obsessiveness. It is often used, literally or metaphorically, in reference to animals: sheer animal cunning ; a man who had the cunning of a wolf.

Duplicity is less ambiguous in its application; it is always negative and refers either to underhanded double-dealing or to outright lying, in which case it may have a euphemistic flavour: price fixers who practise duplicity to cheat the public; She admitted that she had been guilty of duplicity in saying she had another engagement that evening. Craft is most like guile in suggesting someone accustomed to using indirect means to get his way. But the word is less often used than the first pair, except in phrases that link it with one or the other: a man capable of incredible craft and cunning ; The best poker players are those for whom craft and guile seem to be almost second nature.