What did saw mean in Elizabethan English?

Answer 1

"saw" in the Shakespearean language means a wise guy.

Answer 2

It means wise sayings or proverbs. Jaques uses the expression in his famous speech in As You Like It, where he says that the justice is 'full of wise saws'. What he means is that as people get into late middle age and start getting fat, they also start to get sententious and hold themselves out as some kind of moral authority by spouting the kind of banal and trivial clichés which pass for moral guidance.

Answer 3

Usually the past tense of to see, same as now.

It could also be something you cut wood with. ("I know a hawk from a handsaw"--Hamlet)

Or a saying or proverb ("Full of wise saws"--As You Like It")

Answer 4

Apart from the usual meanings today (a cutting instrument, or the past of to see), a saw can mean a saying.