Definition of cagey in English:

adjective

• Reluctant to give information owing to caution or suspicion.

  ‘manufacturers are cagey about the recipes they use to create a wine’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The bird sellers are extremely cagey about sharing information, especially with press persons.’
  • ‘He is intent on making people look good but not necessarily beautiful in his work and achieves this by capturing secretive, edgy or cagey subjects.’
  • ‘The staff was cagy, but confirmed my suspicion with slight, knowing expressions and small tight smiles of sympathy.’
  • ‘Suddenly, caution was the watchword and she grew cagey and defensive, waiting for the chances to land in her lap.’
  • ‘I've been dating Sam for months now, but just recently he's become very secretive and cagey around me.’
  • ‘It's just a case of playing cagey, going careful, and not overstretching yourself.’
  • ‘At lunchtime, he snuck off, being very cagy about where he was to have lunch.’
  • ‘Since we didn't know the sex, we were a bit cagy and said that we'd have to see.’
  • ‘If the 25-year-old was less unassuming and more cagey, he would know that is not the sort of thing a team's talismanic striker is meant to say.’
  • ‘Tassie is cagey about the worth of his license, but the 30 or so permits in his zone are worth more than $4 million each.’
  • ‘The more cagey British ministers become about the evidence, the more likely are their opponents, and the media, to continue obsessing on the issue.’
  • ‘Though still cagey about the new novel's subject matter, he does say it will deal with terrorism and with a hostage crisis.’
  • ‘When I asked to meet him in person, his publicity people turned cagey, stoking my curiosity even more.’
  • ‘He's acting mighty cagey for a guy who just reads the papers, don't you think?’
  • ‘While some were cagey, to say the least, others had no such problems.’
  • ‘Gilbert was being very cagey about his future prospects yesterday.’
  • ‘So they are cagey about letting the common herd assess their work.’
  • ‘She is cagey about the terminology, though, and doesn't use it in the book.’
  • ‘He is cagey, though, on the extent to which he will have room to manoeuvre in the business of player recruitment.’
  • ‘I had the distinct impression that he would not appreciate the wrong answer so I decided to play it cagey.’

  Synonyms

  secretive, guarded, non-committal, tight-lipped, reticent, cautious, circumspect, chary, wary, careful, evasive, elusive, equivocal

  View synonyms