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.

Mother wit

Meaning

Noun

Synonyms