street smarts
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street smarts
Shrewdness that allows one to adeptly navigate the real world, especially life in a city (i.e. "the streets"). What are you talking to panhandlers? Don't you have any street smarts? Shelly is too innocent and sheltered to have any street smarts.
street smarts
n. the knowledge and ability to survive on the urban street. If you don’t have street smarts, you won’t last long out there.
street smarts
The ability to live by one’s wits. This slangy expression, dating from the second half of the 1900s, alludes to the survival skills acquired by living largely on city streets. The New York Times used it, “To be free, however, requires street smarts, the cunning of the survivor” (Aug. 30, 1976).