shrewdness

plural shrewdnesses

1. countableuncountableThe quality of being shrewd.

   2 more examples

   A man with less worldly shrewdness would never have seen how things really stood; a man with less pliability could never have adapted himself to them. It must always be remembered, that his whole administration was one long struggle: he had to maintain his master on the throne, and himself in the ministry; and this was done by sheer force of talent.

   1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Interview”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 245

   At the centre of Stalin’s superiority over his competitors was certainly his intense will, just as Napoleon ranked what he called ‘moral fortitude’ higher in a general than genius or experience. When Milovan Djilas said to Stalin during the Yugoslav-Soviet discussions in Moscow during the war that the Serbian politician Gavrilović was ‘a shrewd man’, Stalin commented, as though to himself: ‘Yes, there are politicians who think shrewdness is the main thing in politics. . . .’⁴⁴ His was a will-power taken to a logical extreme. There is something non-human about his almost total lack of normal restraints upon it.

   1968, Robert Conquest, “The Purge Begins”, in The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, Macmillan Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 75

2. collectivecountableuncountableA group of apes.

   A shrewdness of gibbons will sing together very loudly.

   2012, Streak of Tigers: Animal Groups in the Jungle, Abdo Publishing

   2 more examples

   Larry was dragged off by a shrewdness of apes (a group of apes is called a shrewdness)

   2018, Bob Leszczak, Single Season Sitcoms of the 1990s, McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers, page 186

   The ape's own shrewdness inhabits the first tree, and a rival shrewdness inhabits the second

   2023, Brandon R. Brown, Julia Schaletzky, Sharing Our Science, MIT Press, page 223