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The youngest of the three strange lassies was called Molly Whuppie, and she was very clever. She noticed that before they went to bed the giant put straw ropes round her neck and her sisters', and round his own lassies' necks, he put gold chains. So Molly took care and did not fall asleep, but waited till she was sure every one was sleeping sound. Then she slipped out of the bed, and took the straw ropes off her own and her sisters' necks, and took the gold chains off the giant's lassies. She then put the straw ropes on the giant's lassies and the gold on herself and her sisters, and lay down.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast forever / One grand, sweet song.
1860, John Timbs, School-Days of Eminent Men, page 177:
Lord Macaulay has said of Bunyan: “though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of these minds produced ‘The Paradise Lost;’ the other, ‘The Pilgrim's Progress.’”
I would have sent Alyosha, but what use is Alyosha in a thing like that? I send you just because you are a clever fellow. Do you suppose I don't see that? You know nothing about timber, but you've got an eye.
1892, Margaret Oliphant, The Heir Presumptive and the Heir Apparent, page 263:
He was not clever, poor fellow, he did not know what questions to ask; he asked the same questions again and again. He continued to show his own troubled thoughts, and the vague dread in his mind, […]
(of objects or actions) Showing mental quickness and resourcefulness.
This is a simple but clever trick to solve the problem.
Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers.[…]Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster. Clever financial ploys are what have made billionaires of the industry’s veterans. “Operational improvement” in a portfolio company has often meant little more than promising colossal bonuses to sitting chief executives if they meet ambitious growth targets. That model is still prevalent today.
Mr. Woodhouse was almost as much interested in the business as the girls, and tried very often to recollect something worth their putting in. "So many clever riddles as there used to be when he was young--he wondered he could not remember them! but he hoped he should in time." And it always ended in "Kitty, a fair but frozen maid."
Just before the break Villa were denied a second goal when Bent had the ball in the net, although he was ruled offside after Jean Makoun's clever pass.
The Rosenbloom Loop is a clever little device, but it’s an even more clever symbol of the role that discipline plays in the creation of illusion: the persistence of vision that makes sequential still images appear to move.
But at that moment I knew it was all over for me, I had never thought that this day would come, but it had and I was not feeling too clever. In fact I had to escape to a nearby toilet to be sick.
2019, Neil Forsyth, 30:07 from the start, in Guilt, season 1, episode 1, spoken by Jake McCall (Jamie Sives):
Right, and no, because the solicitor has told her that Walter's legs didn't look too clever, which, apparently, everyone's putting down to a fall, thankfully.
1904, Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, volume XXXVIII, page 255:
When a clever man is out hunting and comes across the tracks of, say, a kangaroo, he follows them along and talks to the footprints all the time for the purpose of injecting magic into the animal which made them.
Prior to this, the two women, who were “clever,” and possessed a certain amount of magical “power,”[…].
1991, John & Sue Erbacher, Aborigines of the Rainforest:
Fred is the clever fellow or tribal doctor who practises with the Kuku-Yalanji people. The tribal doctor’s work includes curing sickness, finding out the causes of death, predicting the future and making and stopping rain.
1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “The Character of John Bull’s Sister Peg, with the Quarrels that Happen’d between Master and Miss, in Their Childhood”, in John Bull Still in His Senses: Being the Third Part of Law is a Bottomless-Pit., London: John Morphew,, →OCLC, page 10:
Tho' the Girl vvas a tight, clever VVench as any vvas, and thro' her pale Looks, you might diſcern Spirit and Vivacity, vvhich made her not indeed a perfect Beauty, but ſomething that vvas agreeable.
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