savvy

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.

• (UK, US, Canada, General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈsæv.i/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ævi

savvy (comparative savvier, superlative savviest)

1. (informal) Shrewd, well-informed and perceptive.
   • 2012 March 22, Scott Tobias, “The Hunger Games”, in AV Club‎^[1], archived from the original on 24 March 2012:

     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

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

1. (informal) To understand.
   • 1925, Sinclair Lewis, chapter XXIV, in Arrowsmith, Harcourt Brace & Co., page 280:

     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!

savvy (uncountable)

1. (informal) Shrewdness.

   Synonym: savviness

• “savvy”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• sarby

From Macau Pidgin Portuguese 撒㗑 (saat3 baai3), 撒備 (saat3 bi6), 散拜 (saan2 baai3), from Portuguese sabe.

savvy

1. to know
   • 1860, The Englishman in China, London: Saunders, Otley, and Co., page 44:

     My no sarby.

     I don’t know.

2. to understand

• Gow, W. S. P. (1924) Gow’s Guide to Shanghai, 1924: A Complete, Concise and Accurate Handbook of the City and District, Especially Compiled for the Use of Tourists and Commercial Visitors to the Far East, Shanghai, page 108: “Savvy: (Portuguese) know; understand; No savvy ? Do you not understand ?”