Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being astute; cunning; shrewdness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The quality of being astute.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun intelligence manifested by being astute (as in business dealings)
  • noun the intellectual ability to penetrate deeply into ideas

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

astute +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • As this is growing wearisome, I would now recommend for a change something else for a pleasure -- namely, the unconscious astuteness with which good, fat, honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier spirits and the tasks they have to perform, the subtle, barbed, Jesuitical astuteness, which is a thousand times subtler than the taste and understanding of the middle-class in its best moments -- subtler even than the understanding of its victims: -- a repeated proof that "instinct" is the most intelligent of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered.

    Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 1872

  • Ah, it's just that snark-ass kind of astuteness I need in my presidential administration.

    Credit crunch solutions #1: Rent a wife Ms Robinson 2008

  • The British, with an astuteness which is oftener the character credited to their opponents, managed to get earliest word of the Declaration sent to their own forts on the

    An Account of the Battle of Chateauguay Being a Lecture Delivered at Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 1905

  • There are also vices which are akin to them, not truly, but with a false kind of similarity, such as astuteness bears to prudence. "

    Nature and Grace: Selections from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas 1954

  • Who wouldn't like a philandering professor who'd added so many lapidary turns of phrase to my repertoire, including “physiognomy of astuteness” and “a knothole of a town in a stump of a state” about Columbia, Missouri, where my sisters went to college.

    My Night With the All-College Girl Revue Con Chapman 2012

  • It is remarkable, but not unprecedented, that a person of such ability and political astuteness should turn out to be so unethical.

    Henry J. Stern: Betrayal of the Public Trust Henry J. Stern 2010

  • Two smart cookies – Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, and Michael Arrington, creator of the influential technology blog TechCrunch – have sold their publications to AOL, a company not noted for the astuteness of its recent decisions.

    Is this the start of the second dotcom bubble? 2011

  • It is remarkable, but not unprecedented, that a person of such ability and political astuteness should turn out to be so unethical.

    Henry J. Stern: Betrayal of the Public Trust Henry J. Stern 2010

  • His wealth has been estimated at £120m, and it is perhaps his astuteness as a businessman that has earned him such respect.

    Tom Ford takes fashion back in time to find its lost mystique 2011

  • This year's ragged yet focused "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" shows that Mr. Earle's lyrical astuteness remains intact, no matter the genre.

    Funk Yards, Beacon Blues Andy Beta 2011

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