SAGACIOUS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sagacious mean? 

• SAGACIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective SAGACIOUS has 2 senses:

1. acutely insightful and wise

2. skillful in statecraft or management

  Familiarity information: SAGACIOUS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SAGACIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Acutely insightful and wise

Synonyms:

perspicacious; sagacious; sapient

Context example:

a source of valuable insights and sapient advice to educators

Similar:

wise (having or prompted by wisdom or discernment)

Derivation:

sagaciousness (the mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Skillful in statecraft or management

Context example:

an astute and sagacious statesman

Similar:

politic (marked by artful prudence, expedience, and shrewdness)

Derivation:

sagaciousness (the trait of forming opinions by distinguishing and evaluating)

sagacity (the mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations)

 Context examples 

After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis eyed her, and said: ARE you pretty comfortable?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Very soon you seemed to get used to me: I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquillised your manner: snarl as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I was heartily tired of being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of seeing my darling under restraint; so I bought a pretty pair of ear-rings for her, and a collar for Jip, and went home one day to make myself agreeable.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

That sagacious Miss Mills, too; that amiable, though quite used up, recluse; that little patriarch of something less than twenty, who had done with the world, and mustn't on any account have the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory awakened; what a kind thing she did!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)