mother wit

• mother-wit

mother wit (uncountable)

1. Inborn intelligence; innate good sense. [from 15th c.]
   • c. 1591, William Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, First Folio 1621, act 2, scene 1:

     Kate. Where did you study all this goodly speech?

     Petr. It is extempore, from my mother wit.

   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.10:

     For all that nature by her mother-wit

     Could frame in earth, and forme of substance base,

     Was there […].

   • 1820, Sir Walter Scott, The Monastery, chapter 35:

     His mother-wit taught him that he must not, in such uncertain times, be too hasty in asking information of any one.

   • 1830, James Fenimore Cooper, The Headsman, chapter 28:

     The buffoon, though accustomed to deception and frauds, had sufficient mother-wit to comprehend the critical position in which he was now placed.

   • 1959 Dec. 21, "FICTION: The Year's Best," Time (retrieved 4 April 2011):

     Russian author Panova, writing with unostentatious excellence, has both the compassion and the mother wit to describe the world of a six-year-old—and to recall an existence that most grownups have forgotten.

   • 2007 April 15, Terrence Rafferty, "Film: A Gumshoe Adrift, Lost in the 70's," New York Times (retrieved 4 April 2011):

     [T]he classic private eye could operate effectively and get to the bottom of things with nothing more than nerve, mother wit and local knowledge.

• common sense, native wit

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