different between endowment vs perspicacity

English

Etymology

From Middle English endowement; equivalent to endow +? -ment.

Pronunciation

• (UK) enPR: ?n-dou?m?nt, ?n-, IPA^(key): /?n?da?m?nt/, /?n?da?m?nt/
• (US) enPR: ?n-dou?m?nt, ?n-, IPA^(key): /?n?da?m?nt/, /?n?da?m?nt/

Noun

endowment (plural endowments)

1. Something with which a person or thing is endowed.
   • 1791, Benjamin Banneker, Letter to Thomas Jefferson on racism and slavery (19 August 1791):

     I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you, to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings, who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world; that we have long been looked upon with an eye of contempt; and that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental endowments.

   • 1958, Adlai Stevenson, Speech to the United Parents Association:

     We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.

   • 1985, Jonas Salk, Interview on The Open Mind (11 May 1985):

     What is … important is that we — number one: Learn to live with each other. Number two: try to bring out the best in each other. The best from the best, and the best from those who, perhaps, might not have the same endowment.
2. Property or funds invested for the support and benefit of a person or not-for-profit institution.
   • 1884, Edwin Abbott Abbott, in chapter 8 of his novella Flatland:

     Not content with the natural neglect into which Sight Recognition was falling, they began boldly to demand the legal prohibition of all "monopolizing and aristocratic Arts" and the consequent abolition of all endowments for the studies of Sight Recognition, Mathematics, and Feeling.

   • 1932, Robert Clarkson Clothier, after assuming the presidency of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

     I seem to see a great university, great in endowment, in land, in buildings, in equipment, but greater still, second to none, in its practical idealism, and its social usefulness.
3. (insurance) Endowment assurance or pure endowment.
4. (Mormonism) A ceremony designed to prepare participants for their role in the afterlife.

Synonyms

• (something with which a person or thing is endowed): gift

Derived terms

• endowment mortgage

Related terms

• endow

Translations

Middle English

Noun

endowment

1. Alternative form of endowement

English

Etymology

perspicac(ious) +? -ity, from Middle French perspicacité, from Latin perspic?cit?s (“sharpsightedness, discrimination”).

Pronunciation

• Hyphenation: per?spi?cac?i?ty
• (UK) IPA^(key): /?p??.sp??kæs.?.ti?/
• (US) enPR: pûr?sp?·k?s??·t?, IPA^(key): /?p???.sp??kæs.?.ti?/

Noun

perspicacity (usually uncountable, plural perspicacities)

1. Acute discernment or understanding; insight.
2. The human faculty or power to mentally grasp or understand clearly.
   • 1856, "Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey," The Quarterly Review, vol. 98, p. 458:

     His very veneration for his father-in-law, combined as it is with a total want of the most ordinary perspicacity, is an additional disqualification.

   • 1888, "Review of La suggestion mentale by H. Bourru and P. Burot," The American Journal of Psychology, vol. 1 no. 3, p. 503:

     As the former consists in the transmission of psychic states inappreciable to the normal perspicacity or senses, the transfer cannot pass through the medium of intelligence.

3. (obsolete) Keen eyesight.
   • 1833, John Harrison Curtis, A Treatise on the Physiology and Diseases of the Eye, London, Longman, p. 138:

     Attentive consideration of the phenomena of vision has led to the invention of artificial aids by which the sight may be wonderfully strengthened and preserved, and man endowed at once with the perspicacity of the eagle or the minute scrutiny of the insect.

Related terms

• perspicacious
• perspicaciousness
• perspicuity

Translations

References

• Webster, Noah (1828) , “perspicacity”, in An American Dictionary of the English Language
• perspicacity in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “perspicacity” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• "perspicacity" in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)
• Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary (1987-1996)