sage

IPA/seɪdʒ/
KK[sˈedʒ]IPA/seɪdʒ/

sage — adjective

  • sagepositive
  • sagercomparative
  • sagestsuperlative

1. showing the sound judgment and deep understanding that come from living through

1.adjectiveC1
Definition

showing the sound judgment and deep understanding that come from living through many different situations over a long period of time.

Example

The villagers sought sage advice from Grandmother Ife before the planting season began.

collocation: sage advice

Keeping extra drinking water in the car during the desert crossing was a sage decision.

collocation: sage decision

Common collocations
  • sage advice
  • sage counsel
  • sage judgment
  • sage decision
  • sage nod
  • sage understanding
Synonyms
  • wise

    far more common in everyday English; sage carries a slightly more literary or respectful tone

  • prudent

    focuses on being careful and avoiding risk, rather than having deep life experience

  • sagacious

    very formal and rare; often used in academic or philosophical writing

Antonyms
  • foolish

    lacking good judgment or sense

  • unwise

    not showing the expected level of good judgment

Usage Note

Common before nouns such as advice, judgment, decision, counsel, and understanding. The comparative forms sager and sagest exist but are rare — most modern writers use more sage and most sage instead.

Common Mistakes

My grandmother is very sage about cooking.
My grandmother is very wise about cooking.
sage as an adjective is reserved for judgments, counsel, or observations, not for describing a person's general character in everyday speech.

sage — noun

Word family

  • sagely
    adverbC2
  • sagacious
    adjectiveC2
  • sagacity
    nounC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

All three describe good judgment, but they differ in register and scope. Wise is the everyday term — it applies broadly to a person, a decision, or an action and carries no special formality. Sage is less common and sits somewhere between wise and literary; it would describe someone's counsel or observation rather than the person themselves in most modern usage. Prudent narrows the focus to caution and careful risk-assessment: a prudent investor avoids losing money, while a sage investor may also understand the broader market story. Sagacious is the rarest and most formal of the three; it belongs to philosophical or academic prose and sounds unnatural in conversation. For example, a friend might give you wise advice about a relationship, a financial planner might give prudent advice about your pension, but a novelist would describe an old mentor's sage counsel or a character's sagacious observations about human nature.

wise ↗prudent ↗sagacious

Etymology

LatinOld FrenchEnglish

Sage entered English through Old French sage (wise, knowing), which came from Vulgar Latin *sapius, derived from Latin sapere — a verb meaning both 'to have good taste' and 'to be wise'. This dual meaning survives in the English herb sense (something you taste) and the wisdom sense (someone whose judgment you value). The two strands of meaning separated early in French, and both travelled into English by the 13th–14th centuries.

First known use

13th century

13th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2a Adjective