Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I had a revelation recently about etymology of the word ‘wise’. It came to me when I was reading and thinknig about different stages in child’s life. There is one particular period when a child asks one billion questions per second. ‘How does fridge work?’, ‘When did you and mama meet?’, ‘Why is the sky blue?’, etc. In Russian parenting books, this period is sometimes called ‘a why’s age’ (’почемучки’), meaning an age where a child asks a lot of ‘Why?’ questions.

And than it hit me - why’s age. It sounds a lot like ‘wise’. And it can be connected too - asking lots of questions can make one wise.

I thought that I’ve discovered the etymology of ‘wise’ on my own, without any references. But when I decided to verify that it was indeed so, I found out that I was wrong. Online Etymology Dictionary has this entry for ‘wise’.

I like mine better anyway.