1955 "-wise" vector; antedatings of "misty" and "Enjoy!"

[James Harbeck]

>I'd missed this. Do you have any idea how frequently "-wise" is actually
>used in _1984_?

Luckily, it's online, full text. Here's what a quick search gets me:

http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/3.html
times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder
doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise
upsub antefiling

In Oldspeak (or standard English) this might be rendered:

The reporting of Big Brother's Order for the Day
in The Times of December 3rd 1983 is extremely
unsatisfactory and makes references to
non-existent persons. Rewrite it in full and
submit your draft to higher authority before
filing.

http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/15.html
'Items one comma five comma seven approved
fullwise stop suggestion contained item six
doubleplus ridiculous verging crimethink cancel
stop unproceed constructionwise antegetting
plusfull estimates machinery overheads stop end
message.'

----

So only two actual usages, but in fact there are
really only a few places in the book where
full-on Newspeak is used (somewhat more where a
word or two or three are used). I hadn't read the
book since, um, 1984, actually, but details of
Newspeak do crop up every so often in the popular
consciousness, it seems, even though there's not
all that much to take it from. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Newspeak_words
for a full lexicon.

I had thought that the -wise usage was current at
the time, but perhaps it was a bit of jargon that
just got on Orwell's wick.

I find this note from the American Heritage Dictionary:

Usage Note: The suffix -wise has a long history
of use to mean "in the manner or direction of,"
as in clockwise, otherwise, and slantwise. Since
the 1930s, however, the suffix has been widely
used in the vaguer sense of "with respect to," as
in This has not been a good year saleswise.
Taxwise, it is an unattractive arrangement. Since
their introduction, these usages have been
associated with informal prose, and they are
still considered by many to be awkward. For this
reason, they might best be avoided, especially in
formal writing. The most obvious alternative is
to use paraphrases, as in This has not been a
good year with respect to sales. As far as taxes
are concerned, it is an unattractive arrangement.

And the OED gives this, plus of course citations and more:

II. OE. wíse manner, fashion, like the cognate
forms in other Germanic languages (see the
respective sections below), was used in various
kinds of advb. expressions meaning 'in
such-and-such a manner, way, or respect', in
which it was qualified by an adj. or a n. with or
without a governing preposition. Several of these
expressions, with others formed on their pattern
in later periods, have survived as simple words,
e.g. anywise, crosswise, leastwise, likewise,
nowise, otherwise, slantwise, in which -wise has
the appearance of a suffix, and, in so far as it
could or can still be freely combined with an
adj. or a n. (as in 1b, 3b), it has actually
performed the function of a suffix. The free use
of the various forms, i.e. apart from the
established simple words, is now only archaic
exc. in sense 3b.

They don't (unless I missed it in skimming) have
clear citations for when the vogue for using it
as a productive suffix that you discern in teh
20th century really cropped up.

James Harbeck.

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