different between endowment vs sagacity

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

sagac(ious) +? -ity, from French sagacité, from Latin sag?cit?s (“sagaciousness”), from sag?x (“of quick perception, acute, sagacious”), from s?gi? (“I perceive by the senses”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /s???æs?ti/, /s???æs?ti/

Noun

sagacity (usually uncountable, plural sagacities)

1. (obsolete) Keen sense of smell.
   • 1607, Edward Topsell, The History of Four-footed Beasts, Serpents, and Insects, London: G. Sawbridge et al., 1658, p. 352,^[1]

     […] this Beast [the Ichneumon] is not only enemy to the Crocodile and Asp, but also to their Egs, which she hunteth out by the sagacity of her nose, and so destroyeth them […]

2. The quality of being sage, wise, or able to make good decisions; the quality of being perceptive, astute or insightful.
   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Volume 3, Chapter 15,^[2]

     Young ladies have great penetration in such matters as these; but I think I may defy even your sagacity, to discover the name of your admirer.

   • 1904, M. P. Shiel, The Evil That Men Do, London: Ward, Lock & Co., Chapter ,^[3]

     Immediately after the meal, when he was alone again, he set to work to examine Drayton’s papers, of which there lay quite a mass on the table near him and, leaning toward the lamp on his elbow, he weighed the meaning of each with a certain sideward sagacity of gaze, a sagacity that smiled in its self-sureness.

     Swiss Family Robinson- "....near the mouth of a creek, towards which all our geese and ducks betook themselves; and I, relying on their sagacity, followed in the same course."

   Synonyms: sagaciousness, wisdom

Related terms

• sagacious

Translations

Further reading

• sagacity in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• sagacity in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• sagacity at OneLook Dictionary Search