Part of Speech: adjective
Pronunciation: ['kæn-ni]
Definition: Knowing, judicious, prudent; frugal; (Scottish) steady, restrained, and gentle.
Usage: Today's word works whenever you wish to characterize something as judicious and steady, "Father Gerhard's canny management of his parish spared it and him the embarrassment suffered in other parishes." Although this is the basic meaning of the word, it has a long association with the judicious control of financial matters, "Luella has a canny sense of exactly how much money her husband can expend over the weekend and arrive at work on time Monday morning—and she dispenses it accordingly."
Suggested Usage: Today's word has an odd orphan negative even though it survives with its original meaning unchanged. The negative, "uncanny," has come to mean "weird, of supernatural nature; eerie" and is no longer related semantically to today's word. The comparative forms are "cannier" and "canniest" while the adverb is "cannily" and the noun, "canniness."
Etymology: From Old English cunnan "to know how, be able to," also the origin of "cunning" and "couth," now found only in "uncouth," from Old English cuth "well-known, excellent." Another relative is the "kith" of "kith and kin" from Old English cyth "acquaintance, friendship, kinfolk." Old English "cnawan," today's "know," comes from the same ultimate root, *gno-. A descendent of this root is found in Latin cognscere "to come to know, get acquainted with" and ignorare "to not know, to disregard," underlying English "ignore" and "ignorant." With a different suffix, *(g)no-dhli- we get Latin nobilis "knowable, known, famous" and our word "noble." The Greek variants, e.g. gignskein "to know, think," lie behind English "gnome," "(a)gnostic," and "diagnosis." (Our thanks to the uncannily canny Steve Hart or Larchmont, New York for suggesting today's word.)
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