craft [OE] The Old English word craft meant ‘strength or skill’. The sense ‘a boat or ship’, initially in the expression ‘small craft’, dates from the 17th century, and may originally have referred to vessels that only needed a small amount of skill to handle, in contrast to large ocean-going ships. People initially used crafty [OE] to mean ‘skilful’; over time this developed the more negative sense of ‘cunning or sly’ that it has today.