street smart

street smart

Having intelligence, wisdom, and shrewdness in the ways of the real world, especially life in a city (i.e. "the streets"). You've got to be street smart to make it in this city, otherwise it'll chew you up and spit you out. I was pretty pampered growing up, but living on my own in New York City for four years made me pretty street smart.
See also: smart, street
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

street smart

mod. wise in the ways of urban life; wise in the ways of tough neighborhoods. Bess wasn’t street smart enough to survive by herself.
See also: smart, street
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • street smarts
  • smart cookie
  • a smart cookie
  • a/one smart cookie
  • (as) smart as paint
  • smart
  • get smart
  • get smart (with one)
  • get smart with someone
  • learn from (someone or something)
References in periodicals archive
Through interviews and photographs Street Smart engages the professionals and shows them at work in the street setting.
Be Street Smart selects college and universA[degrees]ity students and youth from ORSA and AIESEC in Oman to become Road Safety Educators.
Street Smart Psychic's Guide to Getting a Good Reading will appeal to new age and general-interest libraries alike, surveying the secrets to getting the most from a psychic reading.
Fiona Macnab, business manager of John Gulson Primary School, said: "Making sure our pupils are street smart is really important to us.
Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads
RESTAURANTS in Liverpool have joined forces with Street Smart, the UK's pioneering charity dining event, to help homeless people in Liverpool this Christmas.
What makes Street Smart Franchising most unique is the fact that it offers "street smarts" as opposed to "book smarts." Mathews, DeBolt and Percival realize that what's taught in the classroom doesn't always work in real life.
D'Agosta is the street smart, tough-as-nails sidekick, with a history of being something of a rule bender.
Mike and his shipmates sat through a session of Street Smart, a dramatic, gripping program that takes audiences into the kinds of life-changing experiences that firefighters and paramedics face every day on the streets.
Do these offenders have below-normal intelligence, but a reputation for being street smart? To what language levels do they respond?
STREET SMART: Cardiff businessman Renzo Algieri, the man behind the Pocket Rocket courier service outside the Hilton Hotel, Cardiff
* Is "street smart" and savvy, and will be a natural "change agent."
With chapters like Jovenes, Romanticos, and Street Smart, Suave covers the full range of Latin male style and sophistication and pays homage to those men who are changing the way America defines male.
(CPI) is now offering a new safety training program, Street Smart From 9 to 5, that helps employees to learn ways to deal with angry, even violent, customers, employees, and visitors.
This once again came true on Saturday when he lowered the colours of favourite four-year-old bay colt Street Smart while galloping to two-and-a-half lengths victory to land the Eid-ul-Azha Cup and stretched his unbeaten run in the Gymkhana race meeting at the Karachi Racecourse.