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 sapiō (“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”), Portuguese (você) sabe (“you know”) or Spanish (usted) sabe (“you know”), all 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/

  • 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:

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

     My no sarby.

     I don’t know.

2. 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 ?”