SHREWDNESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does shrewdness mean? 

• SHREWDNESS (noun)
  The noun SHREWDNESS has 1 sense:

1. intelligence manifested by being astute (as in business dealings)

  Familiarity information: SHREWDNESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SHREWDNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Intelligence manifested by being astute (as in business dealings)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

astuteness; perspicaciousness; perspicacity; shrewdness

Hypernyms ("shrewdness" is a kind of...):

intelligence (the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience)

Domain category:

business; business enterprise; commercial enterprise (the activity of providing goods and services involving financial and commercial and industrial aspects)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "shrewdness"):

craft; craftiness; cunning; foxiness; guile; slyness; wiliness (shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception)

acumen; insightfulness (shrewdness shown by keen insight)

knowingness (shrewdness demonstrated by knowledge)

street smarts (a shrewd ability to survive in a dangerous urban environment)

Derivation:

shrewd (marked by practical hardheaded intelligence)

shrewd (acting with a specific goal)

 Context examples 

“AND a passage home?” he added with a look of great shrewdness.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Of my friend Heep, said Mr. Micawber, who is a man of remarkable shrewdness, I desire to speak with all possible respect.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Monk-bred as he was, Alleyne had native shrewdness and a mind which was young enough to form new conclusions and to outgrow old ones.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Miss Morrison is a little, ethereal slip of a girl, with timid eyes and blonde hair, but I found her by no means wanting in shrewdness and common sense.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That they were false, the general had learnt from the very person who had suggested them, from Thorpe himself, whom he had chanced to meet again in town, and who, under the influence of exactly opposite feelings, irritated by Catherine's refusal, and yet more by the failure of a very recent endeavour to accomplish a reconciliation between Morland and Isabella, convinced that they were separated forever, and spurning a friendship which could be no longer serviceable, hastened to contradict all that he had said before to the advantage of the Morlands—confessed himself to have been totally mistaken in his opinion of their circumstances and character, misled by the rhodomontade of his friend to believe his father a man of substance and credit, whereas the transactions of the two or three last weeks proved him to be neither; for after coming eagerly forward on the first overture of a marriage between the families, with the most liberal proposals, he had, on being brought to the point by the shrewdness of the relator, been constrained to acknowledge himself incapable of giving the young people even a decent support.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)