A savvy experiment

I am about to embark on an experiment.  I will try to do this at least once a week.  I will pick a word or an expression and explore it's usage.  When I was teaching ESL students who had come America to either work or study, many of them struggled with vocabulary and idiomatic expressions.  It was just not sufficient or even helpful to look up a work in a dictionary.  Dictionaries often don't provide enough contextual information in order to know how to use the word.  Non-native speakers often lack know-how or savvy when it comes to English words.  (Plus I think some native speaker nerds but enjoy the info).

So for the inaugural entry, I thought I'd explore the word "savvy"  whose usage seems fairly low and then suddenly increases exponentially in 1980's.  Let's see if we can find out why.

First, let's establish it's meaning and part of speech.  It is an adjective, noun and even a verb (although I will admit to have never having heard the verb form before.)   These definitions are taken from merriamwebster.com/dictionary

The adjective form means:
: having or showing perception, comprehension, or shrewdness especially in practical matters

The noun form means:
: practical know-how

The verb form means
:understand

Let's see if we can figure out how often each form is used.  `

This is the distribution of two of the adjectival forms that replicate the distribution of the base form. So far looks good. So I would probably say that the adjective form is used frequently.  The verb form does not follow this pattern, as I suspected.


Now, I can search for part of speech on wordsandphrases.info.  This is the distribution results for "savvy".

From this table, we can see that both adjective form and noun forms appear, however, we do not see the verb form.  One reason not to rely on a dictionary alone.  Verbal forms are just not common.  We also see that the adjective form is more frequent than the noun form ranking within the top 10,000, although just barely.   It appears to be most common in magazines and newspapers, for both forms.

It is least common in academic and fiction domains. 

For the adjectival form, the nouns that it occurs most often is "consumer".  You can see that this is a common expression when talking about business or money.  We can also spot "investor, shopper, marketing, businessman, and entrepreneur" in the top collocations.  We also see that is is a used when talking about technology  such as "user"and politics as in "politician". 

When looking at the noun collocations, we see the similar themes, business, politics and technology.   Adjectives that it appears with frequently are "political, financial, technological, very, veteran, seasoned, considerable, technical, tough."

Finally, let's see this word in action and look at some examples.  These examples are taken from worknik.com

He speaks angrily about what he calls a savvy campaign by Pakistan's government under President Pervez Musharraf to fleece Washington for billions of dollars even as it allowed Al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan's tribal lands.

Ablogistan

David Louis Edelman - Edelman's web savvy is unmatched and his content is not only refreshingly original, but also interesting.

SF Signal's 10 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Author Blogs

These examples reflect their common usage in the domains of politics and technology.  We can see the word used both as adjective and as a noun.  

 In short, this is a word that you can use when writing for non-fiction, non-academic piece particular when discussing business, politics and technology. It will definitely demonstrate your English savvy.
 It is not a slang or casual word to use in informal speech but if you use it in conversation, you are likely to impress.  It would be a good word to use in a presentation.   If you find this word in the wild or have the opportunity to use it.  Let me know, I'd love to hear about it.