savvy

Alteration of save, sabi (“know”) (in English-based creoles and pidgins), from Portuguese or Spanish sabe (“[she/he] knows”), from saber (“to know”), from Latin sapere (“to be wise”).

1785, as a noun, “practical sense, intelligence”; also a verb, “to know, to understand”; West Indies pidgin borrowing of French savez(-vous) (“do you know”) or Spanish sabe (usted) (“you know”), both from Vulgar Latin *sapere, from Latin sapere (“be wise, be knowing”) (see sapient). The adjective is first recorded 1905, from the noun.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈsæ.vi/
• Rhymes: -ævi

savvy (comparative savvier, superlative savviest)

1. (informal) Shrewd, well-informed and perceptive.
   • 22 March 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Games

     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.

• canny

• tech-savvy

savvy (third-person singular simple present savvies, present participle savvying, simple past and past participle savvied)

1. (informal) To understand.

savvy (uncountable)

1. Shrewdness

• “savvy” (US) / “savvy” (UK) in Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press.