Dictionary

worldwise en · ADJ

Etymology

From Middle English worldwis, from Old English woruldwīs (“worldwise, worldly-wise, learned”), from Proto-West Germanic [Term?]; compare Middle Dutch wereltwijs (Dutch wereldwijs), Old High German weraltwīs. By surface analysis, world + wise.

Meanings

1. Knowledgeable about the world; worldly-wise; sophisticated; experienced.
   • An older and more world-wise man might have been puzzled by her varying moods, her sudden prejudices, her quick resentment at all constraint and authority. 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 12, in The White Company, London: Smith, Elder & Co., published 1909, page 141:
   • Luttpold Wolkenstein, financier and diplomat on a small, obtrusive, self-important scale, sat in his favoured café in the world-wise Habsburg capital, confronted with the Neue Freie Presse and the cup of cream-topped coffee and attendant glass of water that a sleek-headed piccolo had just brought him. 1919, Saki, “The Purple of the Balkan Kings”, in The Toys of Peace and Other Papers, London: John Lane, page 281:
   • Those who are highly conceited, illuminated, and world-wise, hate, envy, scandalize, defame and persecute this Mystery to the utmost Rind, or innermost Kernel, which hath its beginning out of the Center […] 1671, Basilius Valentinus, chapter 3, in Daniel Cable, transl., Of Natural and Supernatural Things, London: Moses Pitt, page 50:
   • Experience that’s worldwide and worldwise. It’s a difference that’s helped us make friends with a world full of travelers. 1994, U.S. News & World Report:

Forms

Deriveds

worldwisdom