Word of the DayFriday, February 18, 2005
perspicacity
\pur-spuh-KAS-uh-tee\ , noun:1.
Clearness of understanding or insight; penetration, discernment.
Quotes:
His predictions over the years have mixed unusual aristocratic insight with devastating perspicacity.
-- "Why fine titles make exceedingly fine writers", Independent, November 3, 1996
Doubtless these thumbnail sketches, like everything else Stendhal wrote, were intended ultimately to relate to his own notion of himself as a creature of invincible perspicacity and sophistication.
-- Jonathan Keates, Stendhal
Origin:
Perspicacity comes from Latin perspicax, perspicac-, "sharp-sighted," from perspicere, "to look through," from per, "through" + specere, "to look."
