Savvy is shrewd practical understanding. Business savvy, political savvy, no savvy at all.
It works as a noun, an adjective and a verb: somebody has savvy, is savvy, or asks savvy? as a question meaning do you understand. It came into English through sailors and traders from a Portuguese-based pidgin, and it means the street kind of knowledge.
1nounsavvyShrewd practical understanding.
“She had the business savvy to turn a small market stall into a chain of shops.”
savvy is an understanding.
From a pidgin form of Portuguese sabe, he knows, from Latin sapere, to be wise. Sage is a relative.
Proto-Indo-European
*seh₁p-
Latin
sapiō — to taste; to know
Portuguese
sabe — [she/he] knows
English, today
savvy
Built from
Alteration of save, sabi (“to know”) (in English-based creoles and pidgins), from Portuguese sabe (“[she/he] knows”), from saber (“to know”), from Latin sapiō (“to taste; to know”). First appears c. 1785 in a dictionary by Francis Grose, as a noun, “practical sense, intelligence”; also a verb, “to know, to understand”. The adjective is first recorded 1905, from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA