insightful

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meaning 'showing insight or understanding', is first recorded in a work by John Galsworthy in 1907. Since then it has become an omnipresent word of catch-all praise in many kinds of writing in which the writer, probably has no precise idea of the compliment being paid:

She created a film which was memorable, intriguing and moving, a warm and insightful reconstruction of a vanished age—Listener, 1982

It was a wonderful insightful exhibition—Modern Painters, 1988

Sales people must be emotionally literate, pick up signals from clients and be insightful about their own emotions—Daily Telegraph, 2007.

The problem with this overused word (there are several thousand examples in the Old English (up to 1150)C) is that it depends so heavily on insight, which fails to support it with any corresponding force of meaning.

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For a list of words related to insightful, see:

• Intelligent, Informed, Clever, or Articulate

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