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savvy

adj
/ˈsæv.i/CA

Etymology

Alteration of save, sabi (“to know”) (in English-based creoles and pidgins), from Portuguese sabe (“[she/he] knows”), from saber (“to know”), from Latin sapere (“to taste; to know”). First appears c. 1785 in a dictionary by Francis Grose, as a noun, “practical sense, intelligence”; also a verb, “to know, to understand”. The adjective is first recorded 1905, from the noun.

  1. derived from sapiō — “to taste; to know”
  2. derived from sabe — “􂀿she/he􂁀 knows”

Definitions

  1. Shrewd, well-informed and perceptive.

    • That such a safe adaptation could come of The Hunger Games speaks more to the trilogy’s commercial ascent than the book’s actual content, which is audacious and savvy in its dark calculations.

  2. To understand.

    • He's probably a perfect technician as a surgeon, but he knows you get only what you grab. Think of the years it's taken me to learn what he savvied all the time!

  3. Shrewdness.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for savvy. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA