shrewd.
Showing clever resourcefulness in practical matters.
Meaning & usage
Showing clever resourcefulness in practical matters.
Artful, tricky or cunning.
streetwise, street-smart.
Knowledgeable, intelligent, keen.
Nigh accurate.
a shrewd guess
Severe, intense, hard.
a shrewd blow, or assault
Sharp, snithy, piercing.
a shrewd wind
Bad, evil, threatening.
Portending, boding.
Noxious, scatheful, mischievous.
Abusive, shrewish.
Scolding, satirical, sharp.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English schrewed (“depraved; wicked”, literally “accursed”), from schrewen (“to curse; beshrew”), from schrewe, schrowe, screwe (“evil or wicked person/thing”), from Old English sċrēawa (“wicked person”, literally “biter”). Equivalent to shrew + -ed. More at shrew. The sense of "cunning" developed in early 16ᵗʰ c., gradually gaining a positive connotation by 17ᵗʰ c.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.