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
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 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 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)
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)
Google suggests that the Aeschylus quote is unsourced.
capable of achieving some purpose or goal by cunning --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:41, 21 September 2020 (UTC)