Intelligence gained outside of school. Just as useful as book smarts, and in many cases more so. It can be divided into 4 categories.

1.Getting Along With Others- Knowing which questions to ask and not asking too many,being polite and friendly, but also being assertive.

2.Common Sense- Knowing who you can trust, which areas in town are good and which are bad, etc.

3.Self-defense-Knowing how to fight and fend off an attacker, especially if you are small.

4.BS-detection-Knowing when people are trying to fuck you over, reading their intentions, and knowing that most corporate advertisements are complete bullshit.

Someone who knows when to avoid potentially negative situations, that even with a favourable outcome, will not result in any value to them. Also able to read between the lines.

Street smarts is the ability to survive in dangerous situations, fighting skills, and able to blend in with many different types of people.

A person who has alot of common sense and knows what's going on in the world. This person knows what every type of person has to deal with daily and understands all groups of people and how to act around them. This person also knows all the current shit going on in the streets and the ghetto and everywhere else and knows how to make his own right decisions, knows how to deal with different situations and has his own independant state of mind. A street smart person isn't stubborn and actually listens to shit and understands shit.

The general definition of street smart is someone who is intelligent, has good common sense, knows how to handle bad situations, and has the skills necessary to function where they live (usually the ghetto or the streets). However, the term is usually used to contrast and compare with another term known as "book smart".

The stereotype of a street smart person is someone who is intelligent and knows how to handle important situations in the streets but is not as well-educated academically. However, the stereotype of a book smart person is someone who is upper-class and well educated but less knowledgeable when it comes to handling important situations faced in bad neighborhoods and lower-class city areas.

The more extreme and negative stereotypes are that street smart people are unintelligent and incapable of achieving a higher education, while book smart people are naive, easily manipulated, and have bad judgment in bad situations.

Both stereotypes aren't always true and any semblance of them are only due to different lifestyles and experiences.

A person who is wise to the ways of both the streets and to the general ways of how to read situations, street smart people tend to be predominantly from larger cities but not exculusively so, they often can use these skills in business and in social settings,

A trait that helps one cope with the everyday person or situation in the Ghetto and ALSO in personal life and business. A people person. One good with words. Smooth-talker.

An adjective that dumb people use to describe themselves, when they don't get good grades in school.

Strictly defined, "Street Smart" describes a person with knowledge gained by experience rather than education.

In practical application, "Street Smart" is what stupid people claim to be in order to save face when their stupidity comes to light. It is effective in that regard, as it can not be disproved and places the individual in a higher regard than someone who is "Book Smart" by promoting their nebulous "Smarts" as being more practical than the well-educated individual's.

In the context of psychology, the claim of being "Street Smart" when an individual's stupidity is made apparent is vital to preserving their mental well-being. Most people have been engineered to have the fragile type of high self-esteem, which is self-esteem developed in the absence of actual merit that would warrant high self-esteem. As a part of this fragile self-esteem, the person will believe that they are smart regardless of real intelligence, and when that person's iteration of reality is threatened (i.e. their stupidity is made apparent) the psyche protects itself by assuring the individual that what they've been told all their life (that they are smart) is still true by denying this new and conflicting information (their obvious stupidity) and substituting it with an alternative reality, thus avoiding much Cognitive Dissonance (mental pain that results from beliefs not matching reality) and so averting a psychic break. To summarize in a quote, "I reject your reality and replace it with my own."