Talk:wise

Relation between wiseacre and wisecrack[er]

   Wise#Derived terms erroneously lists "wiseacre" (and, tho i digress, "wizen") under "terms derived from wise (adjective)" (or at least invites mistaking citation of common roots for claims of direct descent), since wiseacre, tho having common ancestry via its first syllable, comes into English thru Dutch (rather than Old English).
   Nevertheless, wisecrack and/or wisecracker presumably have phonemic affinity with "wiseacre" via sharing K-phonemes, replacement of one A-family phoneme w/ another, and perhaps reduplication and/or reordering of K-phonemes. Also, while the early English sense of "wiseacre" has disappeared in favor of a modern sense bearing only ironic relationship to it, "wise" has (besides at least continuing to support conscious ironic use of it at any author's discretion) acquired a collection of derivative expressions, including

crack wise
wisecrack
wise apple,
wiseass, and
wise guy

in which reference to "wise" in its main sense is presumed to be ironical use of English (even if occasionally their use exploits oxymoron, ironic use of irony, or perverse ambiguity).
   Could there have been, due to that "phonemic affinity", a contribution by wisecrack[er] to the shift of "wiseacre" from a direct to an ironic relationship to the soothsayer concept?
   Or, if not, could there have been perhaps even folk-etymology influence, in light of awareness of wisecrack[er] using "wise" ironically, in the the adoption of wiseacre (as a term initially used, in imitation of (what i conjecture could have been early Dutch usage), both literally for "soothsayer" and ironically for "charlatan", even the "soothsayer" sense later died out in English?
    And, for thoroughness (tho honestly i think irony is too universal for this to be plausible), could the English even have adopted our ironic senses of "wise" (a word which we got, at least in its non-ironic senses, via Old English wīs) only by imitation of (implicitly ironic) Dutch use of wijs, in calling charlatans "wijssegger"?
--Jerzy•t 05:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

"wise up" and "get wise to"

   It's possible that i just misunderstand what Wikt is trying to do with "Derived terms" sections (especially since the sparse and example-free MoS coverage did nothing to reassure nor dissuade me about what purposes will be useful to users), so i haven't added these two terms which i believe to be terms derived from the adjective "wise"; i hope a more confident editor will consider adding them.
--Jerzy•t 05:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that you would like to know about historic derivation? Is that what you believe should be under the Derived terms heading? DCDuring TALK 13:11, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

   I recall seeing that, and starting a timely response... which obviously i never resulted in anything i saved on Wikt. I'll look for a draft saved offline, but i may have to start from scratch.
--Jerzy•t 01:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I know. I did the same thing just 2 days ago. And not the first time, of course. DCDuring TALK 02:20, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Aeschylus

Google suggests that the Aeschylus quote is unsourced.

shrewd

capable of achieving some purpose or goal by cunning --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:41, 21 September 2020 (UTC)