cliver

1. dialectalobsoleteclever

   "Ah, but it's a cliver trick, no doubt of it."

   1893, Robert Michael Ballantyne, The World of Ice

   3 more examples

   There's ways a cliver agent can run up a reckoning, and when you want Mireside I'll have to gan." "

   1918, Harold Bindloss, The Buccaneer Farmer

   For I've often a deal inside me as'll never come out; and for what you talk o' your folks in your old country niver saying prayers by heart nor saying 'em out of a book, they must be wonderful cliver; for if I didn't know "Our Father", and little bits o' good words as I can carry out o' church wi' me, I might down o' my knees every night, but nothing could I say."

   1861, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XVI, in Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC

   Oh, they be cliver creturs, and they'll do what they likes with old Nick, when they gets there, for 'tis the old gentlemen they cozens the best; and then," continued the Corporal, waxing more and more loquacious, for his appetite in talking grew with that it fed on,--"then there be another set o' queer folks you'll see in Lunnon, Sir, that is, if you falls in with 'em,--hang all together, quite in a clink.

   1831, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Eugene Aram, Complete

plural Clivers

1. A surname from German.