savvy

Savvy comes from sabi ("to know"), used in English-based creoles and pidgins, which traces back to Portuguese sabe, "[she/he] knows," from saber, ultimately from Latin sapere, "to taste; to know." It first shows up in English in 1785, in a dictionary by Francis Grose.

It began as both a noun and a verb meaning "practical sense" or "to know, to understand." The adjective we use most today didn't appear until 1905, borrowed from that earlier noun.

It shares its root with Latin sapere, "to taste; to know" — the same root that gives English words built on the idea of tasting or discerning, though no specific cognate is named in the record here.