It's Merriam Webster's Word of the Day for July 2nd.

Today's word is sagacious, spelled S-A-G-A-C-I-O-U-S.

Seagatious is an adjective.

Someone or something described as sagacious has or shows an ability to

understand difficult ideas and situations and to make good decisions. Seagacious may be considered a

formal synonym of the words wise and discerning. Here's the word used in a sentence from Billboard. It's a lyrical truism with the

kind of wisdom that feels particularly sagacious only within the context of pop music. Of course,

breaking up is hard to do, but when expressed by Neil Sedaka at the end of each verse and the

beginning of each bridge, of his pained plea to his partner to

give our love another try, it feels like hard-earned insight. You might expect wise word-wank that

you are, that the word sagacious is etymologically linked with the word sage, which as an

adjective means wise, or as as a noun a wise person.

However, despite similarities of spelling, sound, and sense, the two words are not closely related.

Sagacious comes from saggiere, a Latin verb meaning to perceive keenly, while sage comes from a

different Latin verb,

Sepere, which means to taste, to have good taste, or to be wise.

Sagacious entered the English language around the beginning of the 1600s,

and for some decades referred to perceptiveness of sight, taste, and especially smell, hewing close to its

Latin ancestor. It has largely lost the sense, no pun intended, of sensory keenness, and now

almost exclusively describes someone or something displaying keen, discerning judgment.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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