Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having or showing keen discernment, sound judgment, and farsightedness. See Synonyms at shrewd.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Keenly perceptive; discerning, as by some exceptionally developed or extraordinary natural power; especially, keen of scent: with of.
- Exhibiting or marked by keen intellectual discernment, especially of human motives and actions; having or proceeding from penetration into practical affairs in general; having keen practical sense; acute in discernment or penetration; discerning and judicious; shrewd: as, a sagacious mind.
- Intelligent; endowed with sagacity.
- Synonyms and Sage, Knowing, etc. (see astute); perspicacious, clear-sighted, long-headed, sharp-witted, intelligent, well-judged, sensible.
Wiktionary
- adj. Having or showing keen discernment, sound judgment, and farsightedness.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of quick sense perceptions; keen-scented; skilled in following a trail.
- adj. Hence, of quick intellectual perceptions; of keen penetration and judgment; discerning and judicious; knowing; far-sighted; shrewd; sage; wise.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. skillful in statecraft or management
- adj. acutely insightful and wise
Etymologies
- Coined between 1600 and 1610 from sagacity + -ous (Wiktionary)
- From Latin sagāx, sagāc-, of keen perception; see sāg- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“All the more perhaps for that, she was born sagacious, which is”
“Wise business management, and more particularly what is spoken of as safe and sane business management, therefore, reduces itself in the main to a sagacious use of sabotage; that is to say a sagacious limitation of productive processes to something less than the productive capacity of the means in hand.”
An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation
“He was a man of large wealth, and well known as a sagacious financier.”
Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Carolinians
“All the more perhaps for that, she was born sagacious, which is a less pleasing, but, in a bitter pinch, a more really useful, quality.”
“Forty years after Benjamin worked in Palmer's printing-office, he visited England in the service of his country, widely known as a sagacious statesman and profound philosopher.”
The Printer Boy. Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth.
“At least it could hardly be called sagacious generalship on the part of the stadholder.”
“Certain it is that the maid's speech communicated a suspicion to the mind of Amelia which the behaviour of the serjeant did not tend to remove: what that is, the sagacious readers may likewise probably suggest to themselves; if not, they must wait our time for disclosing it.”
“(as it is the fashion to call the sagacious straitness) of the abler men who knew how to root the English stock firmly in this new soil on either side of him, his little plantation could never have existed, and he himself would have been remembered only, if at all, as one of the jarring atoms in a chaos of otherwise-mindedness.”
“a prominent position, and was known as a sagacious counsellor, a persuasive speaker, a ready and effective debater, and a good steady worker on Committees.”
An Algonquin Maiden A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada
“And _All elephants are sagacious_ does not limit sagacity to elephants: regarding 'sagacious' as possibly denoting many animals of many species that exhibit the quality, this proposition is equivalent to '_All elephants are_ some _sagacious animals_.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sagacious’.
-
Iaan
dirigisme, dystopia, cacotopia, ex ante, veritable, indefatigable, curmudgeon, desultory, antediluvian, transmogrify, pendent, elongate and 272 more...
-
501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
-
501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
-
GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
-
SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
-
501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
-
501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
-
gre words
convoluted, deride, melancholy, antagonize, antagonize, deference, portentous, prodigious, ruminate, ineffable, turgid, mossy and 58 more...
-
Sober/Stately/Steady
resolute, unfaltering, deliberate, resolved, circumspect, thoughtful, intent, earnest, ardent, intense, sedulous, laborious and 138 more...
-
Old words
recalcitrant, grok, Hiatus, shanghai, pervade, diffuse, tempestuous, incorrigible, daunt, cull, Erudite, Assuage and 35 more...
-
ASTUTE
This lists the words associated with ASTUTE
-
to memorize
words i need to memorize
aberrant, abscond, advocate, aggrandize, amalgamate, ambiguous, ambrosial, anomalous, antediluvian, antipathy, arbitrate, assuage and 163 more...
-
SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
-
SAT Vocab
Redundant.
problematic, proclivity, prodigal, prodigious, prodigy, profane, profligate, profound, profusion, proliferation, prolific, prologue and 455 more...
-
My Revised GRE Preparation List
Words from the new GRE : This list consists mostly of words from the book Magoosh-GRE-vocab-ebook, which is one of the best vocab materials available, especially if you have started preparing one ...
alacrity, prosaic, veracity, paucity, contrite, trite, maintain, laconic, pugnacious, disparate, egregious, innocuous and 533 more...
-
Way to Be
inexorable, sagacious, ratiocinative, candid, aplomb, aberrant, discursive, indomitable, perspicuous, gravitas
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sagacious.
bilby "The sagacious reader will not from this simile imagine these poor people had any apprehension of the design with which Mrs. Wilkins was now coming towards them; but as the great beauty of the simile may possibly sleep these hundred years, till some future commentator shall take this work in hand, I think proper to lend the reader a little assistance in this place."
- Henry Fielding, 'The History of Tom Jones'. Sep 8, 2009
marky Nice wordie but your mishap was not sagacious but innocuous. Could you have spelled that? :) Dec 23, 2008
oroboros Here's a fun little anecdote I found on MyFavoriteWord.com, by Sheila Confer:
"I was an outstanding speller in my youth. In seventh grade I won the school wide spelling test and got to go all the way to Pittsburgh, PA for a regional final. Out of 700 (probably more like 30) children, I survived until the final three. My word? Sagacious: Having or showing keen discernment, sound judgment, and farsightedness. I spelled it "s-E-g-a-c-i-o-u-s."
It is my favorite word for two reasons. One, I will never forget how to spell it, and two, the winner of the contest had to spell tulle: A fine, often starched net of silk, rayon, or nylon, used especially for veils, tutus, or gowns. I would have surely spelled it t-o-o-l and been embarrassed for life. It was therefore very sagacious of me to misspell sagacious...right?"
Sep 29, 2007
sera sagacious : perspicacious Aug 29, 2007