Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

acumen

UK/ˈækjʊmən/US/ˈækjəmən/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,407 of 15,258leans written

Acumen is a quick and shrewd judgement in practical matters. Business acumen, political acumen, sharp acumen.

It nearly always takes a field in front of it, since acumen is judgement about something rather than in general. The Latin means a sharp point, which is the same image as an incisive mind.

Definitions of acumen

  1. 1nounacumenA quick and shrewd judgement in practical matters.C1

    “Her business acumen turned a small bakery into a chain of twenty shops.”

acumen is a judgement.

Where it comes from

Latin acumen means a sharp point, from acuere, to sharpen.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *h₂eḱ-

  2. Latin

    acūmen — sharp point

  3. English, today

    acumen

Borrowed from Latin acūmen (“sharp point”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

acumen in the wild

  • The UK government considers business acumen to be a skill required by civil service staff with responsibilities in a contract management role.

    Business acumen

  • Additionally, business acumen is viewed as having emerged as a vehicle for improving financial performance and leadership development.

    Business acumen

  • The city which is famous for Bullion, Banking and its Business acumen, is the darling of investors in Kerala.

    Economy of Thrissur

  • Hastula acumen is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Terebridae, the auger snails.

    Hastula acumen

  • Published by Greenleaf Book Group, it covers the topic of business acumen.

    Seeing the Big Picture

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.