Savvy
adj, noun, verb, slang ·2 syllables ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Shrewdness. informal, uncountable
- 2 the cognitive condition of someone who understands wordnet
- 1 To understand. informal
"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!"
- 2 get the meaning of something wordnet
- 1 Shrewd, well-informed and perceptive. informal
"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."
Example
More examples"Tom has no business savvy at all."
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.
Related phrases
More for "savvy"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.