perspicaciousness

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per·spi·ca·cious

(pûr′spĭ-kā′shəs)

adj.

Having or showing penetrating mental discernment; clear-sighted. See Synonyms at shrewd.

[From Latin perspicāx, perspicāc-, from perspicere, to look through; see perspective.]

per′spi·ca′cious·ly adv.

per′spi·ca′cious·ness n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

perspicaciousness - intelligence manifested by being astute (as in business dealings)

astuteness, perspicacity, shrewdness

business enterprise, commercial enterprise, business - the activity of providing goods and services involving financial and commercial and industrial aspects; "computers are now widely used in business"

intelligence - the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience

craftiness, cunning, foxiness, guile, slyness, wiliness, craft - shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception

insightfulness, acumen - shrewdness shown by keen insight

knowingness - shrewdness demonstrated by knowledge

street smarts - a shrewd ability to survive in a dangerous urban environment

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References in periodicals archive ?

For all her perspicaciousness in The Feminine Mystique (published in 1963, two years before Jackson's death from cardiac arrest at forty-eight), Friedan admonishes Jackson and her ilk--"Housewife Writers," she sneers--for the ways in which they "deny the lives they lead, not as housewives, but as individuals." Friedan is referencing not the "serious" fiction Jackson published in the New Yorker, but the very funny domestic essays she contributed to women's magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal and Mademoiselle, collected as the widely beloved Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons (both were reissued last year).

Who's afraid of Virginia Werewolf: a biography reconsiders the misunderstood legacy of best-selling writer Shirley Jackson?

His intelligence manifested by being astute, his political acumen and perspicaciousness proved to be more mature than what the people thought.

An Admonishment with Tears

Never More Together, a visual and wordless poem by Steven McCabe, is an unsettling story of the harsh treatment of truth and perspicaciousness in a society ruled by fear.