Perspicacious means quick to notice and understand what others miss. A perspicacious remark, perspicacious about people, remarkably perspicacious.
It is a compliment about noticing rather than about knowing, which is a finer thing. It is a different word from perspicuous, which means clearly expressed, and the pair is confused constantly.
1adjectiveperspicaciousQuick to notice and understand what others miss.
“A perspicacious reader will notice the clues hidden in the first chapter.”
perspicacious is a quality.
Also accepted in games: perceptive
Latin perspicax means sharp-sighted, from perspicere, to look through.
Proto-Indo-European
*speḱ-
Latin
perspicācitās — discernment
English, today
perspicacious
Built from
First attested 1548, from Latin perspicācitās (“discernment”), from Latin perspicax (“sharp-sighted”), from perspiciō (“look through”), from per- (“through”) + speciō (“look at”). See also perspective.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA