Meaning of mother wit | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Inborn intelligence; innate good sense.
   uncountable
2. A person with such intelligence.
   countable, obsolete

Examples

“Kate. Where did you study⟳ all this goodly speech? Petr. It is extempore, from my mother wit.”

“For all that nature by her mother-wit Could frame in earth, and forme of substance base⟳, Was there […].”

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

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

“One of those young genii who write⟳ us Science Notes in the papers got hold⟳ of a German pamphlet about the birds of New Zealand, and translated some of it by means of a dictionary and his mother-wit — he must have⟳ been one of a very large family with a small mother — and he got mixed between the living apteryx and the extinct anomalopteryx...”

“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.”

“[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.”

“From iygging vaines of riming mother wits, And ſuch conceits as clownage keepes in pay⟳, Weele lead⟳ you to the ſtately tent of War, Where you ſhall heare the Scythian Tamburlaine: Threatning the world with high aſtounding tearms And ſcourging kingdomes with his conquering ſword.”

CEFR level