noun

• 1The quality of having or showing good powers of judgement.

  ‘he is a man of some tactical shrewdness’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Offering critics a helping hand by planting for their use a ready-made descriptive vocabulary reflects his shrewdness of strategy.’
  • ‘He is constantly reminding them that "it's a business" and the charmed life they have led in the media is mainly due to his shrewdness and accessibility.’
  • ‘While his shrewdness commands respect, it also inspires fear.’
  • ‘What he lacked in money and sporting prowess, he made up in shrewdness.’
  • ‘Certainly he surprised observers by the scope of the shrewdness and intelligence which he brought to bear on his self-justifications.’
  • ‘Farmers were renowned in this country for being shrewd, hard-headed business man and they had not lost any of this shrewdness.’
  • ‘Edward displayed shrewdness and ruthlessness in the way he turned on nobles who had usurped his power during his minority.’
  • ‘He is fiendishly bright, well-spoken in a very clipped, Scottish kind of way, but streetwise too; a bit like a smartly dressed bookie who views the world through a veil of tobacco smoke and shrewdness.’
  • ‘He looked me in the eye with what he obviously believed to be a look that blended shrewdness and menace.’
  • ‘She sees him as idiosyncratic, traditionalist, and with a gift for combining political shrewdness with a sense of self-promotion and opportunism.’

  Synonyms

  astuteness, sharp-wittedness, sharpness, acuteness, acumen, acuity, intelligence, cleverness, smartness, alertness, wit, canniness, common sense, discernment, insight, understanding, penetration, perception, perceptiveness, perspicacity, perspicaciousness, discrimination, knowledge, sagacity, sageness

  View synonyms

• 2rare count noun A group of apes.

  ‘If a shrewdness of apes is so clever, why do they live where they do?’

  More example sentences

  • ‘I am rousing a decidedly unshrewd shrewdness of apes.’
  • ‘I'd still be tempted to run if we encountered a number of huge hairy apes, but it's nice to know that we're escaping from a shrewdness of apes.’
  • ‘The new series must chart the story of how Caesar grows from faithful pet-cum-laboratory subject of a San Francisco scientist to become the leader of the shrewdness of apes.’
  • ‘While the fight may not be as visually arresting as, say, a shrewdness of apes stampeding across San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, it will certainly do.’