Mother wit

Kate. Where did you study all this goodly speech? Petr. It is extempore, from my mother wit.

For all that nature by her mother-wit Could frame in earth, and forme of substance base, Was there […].

His mother-wit taught him that he must not, in such uncertain times, be too hasty in asking information of any one, [...]

The buffoon, though accustomed to deception and frauds, had sufficient mother-wit to comprehend the critical position in which he was now placed.

One of those young genii who write us Science Notes in the papers got hold of a German pamphlet about the birds of New Zealand, and translated some of it by means of a dictionary and his mother-wit — he must have been one of a very large family with a small mother — and he got mixed between the living apteryx and the extinct anomalopteryx...

Russian author Panova, writing with unostentatious excellence, has both the compassion and the mother wit to describe the world of a six-year-old—and to recall an existence that most grownups have forgotten.

[T]he classic private eye could operate effectively and get to the bottom of things with nothing more than nerve, mother wit and local knowledge.

From iygging vaines of riming mother wits, And ſuch conceits as clownage keepes in pay, Weele lead you to the ſtately tent of War, Where you ſhall heare the Scythian Tamburlaine: Threatning the world with high aſtounding tearms And ſcourging kingdomes with his conquering ſword.