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Road Runner always bests Wile E. Coyote in the famous Looney Tunes cartoon series, but both characters help demonstrate meanings of the word astute. Astute comes from the Latin adjective astutus, meaning “cunning, crafty, or clever,” which in turn comes from the noun astus, meaning “craft.” The English adjective, accordingly, can describe both the crafty and the wily. It’s easy to see how this applies to Wile E. Coyote: in each episode, Road Runner races along the highways of the American Southwest while the coyote sets an elaborate trap for the bird, usually with the aid of some goofy product ordered from the fictitious Acme company. But alas, Road Runner is astute, as in “mentally sharp or clever.” In other words, he is not only quick on his feet, but quick on the uptake. He usually catches wind of the schemes, which ultimately backfire due to either the products’ chronic unreliability or Coyote’s own ineptitude. Road Runner, never captured or damaged, responds with a characteristic “Beep! Beep!” and runs off.
Examples of astute in a Sentence
Ben Wallace-Wells, Rolling Stone, 15 Nov. 2007
He asked astute diagnosticians around the country how they approached and cracked difficult diagnoses and what happened when they failed. Misdiagnosis is not an insignificant problem: Groopman cites a finding that between one in six and one in seven patients is incorrectly assessed.
—Ruth Levy Guyer, Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2007
And finally, even if she had never actually uttered the bon mot that would be famously attributed to her, that if she had two heads, she would risk one in the king's service, could the astute young duchess actually have had input into the implausible negotiations?
—Harvey Rachlin, Scandals, Vandals, and Da Vincis, 2007
Focusing largely upon Western alchemy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she has a sharp eye for how alchemical images surface in literature of that period. Readers of Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare will find illuminating insights. Abraham reveals the far reaches of her astute literary intelligence by analyzing alchemical imagery encoded in a broad range of works, from Chaucer and Milton to Vladimir Nabokov and P. G. Wodehouse.
—Norman Weinstein, Parabola, November 1999
He is an astute observer of the current political scene.
Astute readers will notice the error.
His analysis of the battle was very astute.
Stockstory Team, CNBC, 22 Feb. 2025
The financially astute among you (which is all of you, dear readers) will have spotted that a $599 phone being paid off at $5.99 a month should take 100 months, right?
—David Phelan, Forbes, 20 Feb. 2025
Against Brighton, the decision to play a rough 3-4-3 was one of the most astute calls Nuno has made during his 14 months in charge.
—Paul Taylor, The Athletic, 16 Feb. 2025
Kendall-Taylor is a former intelligence official and scholar of authoritarian regimes and Russian politics; Kofman is one of the most astute analysts of the war in Ukraine.
—Foreign Affairs, 30 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for astute
Cite this Entry
“Astute.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/astute. Accessed 3 Mar. 2025.
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