Word of the Week – Savvy

I recently saw a list of fun Colonial-era words that we should totally bring back into use.  One of them was savvy, which anyone who watched Pirates of the Caribbean can hear in Jack Sparrow’s voice.

Well, just for the record, Jack was totally using it appropriately. 😉

Savvy today usually means “practical sense, intelligence”–which has been around since 1785. Think “he’s tech-savvy.” But it is indeed also a verb, meaning “to know, to understand,” taken directly from French savoir-vous and/or Spanish sabe, both of which mean “you know.”

So this is really just an older way of tacking that dreaded “you know?” question onto the end of a sentence, savvy? 😉