-WISE

-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!”