shrewdness

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Middle English schrewed

Proto-Germanic *-in-

Proto-Indo-European *-h₂

Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂

Proto-Indo-European *-yéti

Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti

Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ti

Proto-Germanic *-ōną

Proto-Germanic *-inōną

Proto-Indo-European *-dyé-

Proto-Germanic *-atjaną

Proto-Indo-European *-tus

Proto-Germanic *-þuz

Proto-Germanic *-assuz

Proto-Germanic *-inassuz

Proto-West Germanic *-nassī

Old English -nes

Middle English -nesse

Middle English schrewednesse

English shrewdness

Inherited from Middle English schrewednesse. By surface analysis, shrewd + -ness.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃɹuːdnəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

shrewdness (countable and uncountable, plural shrewdnesses)

1. The quality of being shrewd.
   • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Interview”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 245:

     A man with less worldly shrewdness would never have seen how things really stood; a man with less pliability could never have adapted himself to them. It must always be remembered, that his whole administration was one long struggle: he had to maintain his master on the throne, and himself in the ministry; and this was done by sheer force of talent.

   • 1968, Robert Conquest, “The Purge Begins”, in The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties‎^[1], Macmillan Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 75:

     At the centre of Stalin’s superiority over his competitors was certainly his intense will, just as Napoleon ranked what he called ‘moral fortitude’ higher in a general than genius or experience. When Milovan Djilas said to Stalin during the Yugoslav-Soviet discussions in Moscow during the war that the Serbian politician Gavrilović was ‘a shrewd man’, Stalin commented, as though to himself: ‘Yes, there are politicians who think shrewdness is the main thing in politics. . . .’⁴⁴ His was a will-power taken to a logical extreme. There is something non-human about his almost total lack of normal restraints upon it.

2. (collective) A group of apes.
   • 2018, Bob Leszczak, Single Season Sitcoms of the 1990s‎^[2], McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers, page 186:

     Larry was dragged off by a shrewdness of apes (a group of apes is called a shrewdness)

   • 2012, Streak of Tigers: Animal Groups in the Jungle‎^[3], Abdo Publishing:

     A shrewdness of gibbons will sing together very loudly.

   • 2023, Brandon R. Brown, Julia Schaletzky, Sharing Our Science‎^[4], MIT Press, page 223:

     The ape's own shrewdness inhabits the first tree, and a rival shrewdness inhabits the second