This word — which comes in two flavors, a noun meaning “practical sense, intelligence” and a verb meaning “to know, understand” — has a long and winding road behind it. It began as the Proto Indo European base verb sep, meaning “taste, percieve”, and descended into Latin as sapere, “to taste”; but its meaning shifted slightly, and it also meant “to HAVE taste”, “to be wise”. Derived from that verb was the adjective sapientem, “wise”; and this adjective came into Old French as sapient, from which it came into English as — you guessed it — sapient.

But wait! We’re not here to talk about sapient. Where does savvy fit in?

The Latin verb sapere, “to taste, to have taste, to be wise” descended into Spanish as sabe, “to know”, and into French as savez-vous, “do you know?”. A thousand years later, in the West Indies, French and Spanish mixed with wild abandon in the hot tropical sun, coaxed into a new pidginized form by the people brought there as slaves and workers. They merged savez-vous and sabe into savvy. Savvy then spread up the North American coast along with the trade in sugar cane, and entered the slang vocabulary of English, where it has remained happily since at least 1700.

Usually slang terms have one of two fates: they either die out entirely after a generation or less (the fate of most), or they become gentrified and elevated to polite society (kidnap is an example of that — it started out as slave trade slang in the 1600’s). Savvy is one of those rare slang terms that remain slang for hundreds of years. Cool is another one — it’s been slang since it was introduced in 1825.

The sound of savvy suggests a broad, powerful, directed energy channeled into a narrow opening, and then pushed on, sustaining its force. The implication may be that someone who is savvy has control of a given area of knowledge, and can direct its energy.

Thanks to Ali for suggesting this word of the day.

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