Thread: Usage
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Unread Sep 3rd, 2008, 02:33 am
susan53 susan53 is offline
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Default Re: Usage

Sounds a bit odd to me. Why the capital "P"? What do you mean exactly - can you give the context?

Th suffix -wise can mean "in that manner/direction" - eg He moved crabwise across the room; Turn it clockwise.

The second meaning is "in terms of that" - eg The first option is the best cost-wise; I think we could have problems time-wise

The third meaning is "wise about that" - eg As autumn slides into winter across Europe, weather-wise walkers look further south-east and south-west; Andy is a street-wise ex-cop, with a blunt, no-nonsense approach ...

All examples were taken or adapted slightly from the British National Corpus. But I had a hard time finding them - it doesn't seem to be very common. Streetwise and clockwise were most usual, and there were also quite a lost of examples for crabwise. But only two each for cost-wise and time-wise.

As you can see, the examples with meaning 1 are usually written as one word, while meanings 2 and 3 usually have a hyphen.

Hope that helps.
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