Wise

How to spell wise

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wise

What does wise mean?

1. adjectiveShowing good judgement and the ability to make sound decisions based on knowledge and experience.

Wise in a sentence

• Taking out insurance before the trip was a wise decision.

• Her grandmother gave her wise advice about saving money.

Where does wise come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends directly from the Old English wīs, meaning 'learned, sagacious, knowing', and it belongs to the native Germanic core of English rather than to any borrowed Latin or French stock. The root traces back to a Proto-Germanic form related to the verb 'to know' or 'to see', the same ancient source that gave us 'wit', 'witness', and the noun 'wisdom'. Speakers of the day understood it as the quality of someone who had truly seen and understood the world, so the link to perception and knowledge sits at its heart. The familiar combining ending '-wise', as in 'clockwise' or 'lengthwise', comes from a separate but related Old English noun wīse meaning 'manner' or 'way', which survives today only in old phrases such as 'in no wise'. Because the word is short and the final 'e' is silent, the main spelling care is simply remembering that it ends in '-se' rather than the '-ze' of its American cousins, and that it is distinct from the homophone 'whys'.

How the word is built

• wis- (Old English wīs: knowing, sagacious)
• silent -e