clever

adjective12

1. •
   quick to understand and learn, and good at thinking of ways to solve problems
2. •
   Mentally quick and resourceful; skilled at achieving what one wants in a mentally agile and inventive way.

   • With a clever lawyer, she could easily be acquitted.
3. •
   Smart, intelligent, or witty; mentally quick or sharp.
4. •
   Showing mental quickness and resourcefulness.

   • This is a simple but clever trick to solve the problem.
5. •
   Showing inventiveness or originality; witty.

   • I felt they expected me to say clever things, and I never could think of any till after the party was over. — 1919
6. •
   Nimble with hands or body; dexterous; skillful; adept.

   • My dad is quite clever with his hands, especially at carpentry.
7. •
   (UK, informal) Fit and healthy; free from fatigue or illness.

   • 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. — 2010
8. •
   (US, old-fashioned) Good-natured; obliging.
9. •
   Possessing magical abilities.

   • Prior to this, the two women, who were “clever,” and possessed a certain amount of magical “power,”[…]. — 1947
10. •
    (no longer used) Sane; in one's right mind.

    • 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, […] — 1892
11. •
    (no longer used) Fit; suitable; having propriety.

    • 18th c, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope (later lines), Imitation of Horace, 1852, Charles Knight (collator), Half-hours with the Best Authors, Volume 4, page 188, I can't but think 'twould sound more clever, To me and to my heirs forever.
12. •
    (no longer used) Well-shaped; handsome.

    • 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. — 1712