Perspicacity vs Acuity - What's the difference?
perspicacity | acuity |
Acute discernment or understanding; insight.
* 1904 , (Jack London), The Sea-Wolf , ch. 8:
The human faculty or power to mentally grasp or understand clearly.
* 1856 , "Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey," The Quarterly Review , vol. 98, p. 458:
* 1888 , "Review of La suggestion mentale'' by H. Bourru and P. Burot," ''The American Journal of Psychology , vol. 1 no. 3, p. 503:
(obsolete) Keen eyesight.
* 1833 , John Harrison Curtis, A Treatise on the Physiology and Diseases of the Eye , London, Longman, p. 138:
Sharpness or acuteness, as of a needle, wit, etc.
As nouns the difference between perspicacity and acuity
is that perspicacity is acute discernment or understanding; insight while acuity is sharpness or acuteness, as of a needle, wit, etc.perspicacity
English
Noun
(-)- "I understand," I said. "The fact is that you have the money." His face brightened. He seemed pleased at my perspicacity .
- His very veneration for his father-in-law, combined as it is with a total want of the most ordinary perspicacity , is an additional disqualification.
- As the former consists in the transmission of psychic states inappreciable to the normal perspicacity or senses, the transfer cannot pass through the medium of intelligence.
- Attentive consideration of the phenomena of vision has led to the invention of artificial aids by which the sight may be wonderfully strengthened and preserved, and man endowed at once with the perspicacity of the eagle or the minute scrutiny of the insect.
References
* * * *"perspicacity"in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2007) * Oxford English Dictionary , second edition (1989) * Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary (1987-1996)
