-WISE
This is not
about wisdom. It’s about the suffix -wise,
as in otherwise. Any dictionary will
tell you that as an adjective or adverb it means something else, different from
what is being considered. But what does it mean when attached, - with a hyphen
or not - to other words?
Dictionary
definitions state that in such instances –wise
denotes a way of indicating an alternative manner of dealing with a thing,
a position or a direction. For example, this sentence: I laid the planks length-wise indicated the direction in which I
laid the planks.
We often
insert such adverbs into our common conversation, as in salary-wise, health-wise or time-wise.
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (1998) considers that form of speech
“inelegant.” I suspect that most people think otherwise.
Indeed, I
suspect that the explanation of Webster’s Standard American Dictionary is
closer to what most people think. Used as a suffix, -wise creates words that show awareness and concern of a particular
subject. A person experienced in some professional field as the media or
finance could well be regarded a media-wise
or money-wise.
Perhaps we are
just being pedantic is objecting to such adjectives. Or is snooty a better way of criticizing those attitudes, as an old-school
teacher might demand better grammar and vocabulary in our use of the Queen’s
English?
After reading
some of the essays written by high school and even college students, I am
grateful for my teachers who insisted that I take care with the way I use words
and form sentences. Parsing compound complex sentences in senior public school
grammar was distinctly unpleasant work. When I describe what that task entailed,
all I get to my grandchildren is a stare or an abhorrent reply, “We never do
that!”
