Other forms: wiser, wisest
Wise means understanding life deeply, usually through age and experience. A wise decision, a wise old woman, it would be wise to check.
It is not the same as clever or intelligent: those are about quickness, wise is about judgement, and somebody can be very clever and very unwise. The noun is wisdom, and wisdom teeth are named because they arrive in your twenties. Note the fixed phrase be wise to something, meaning to have seen through it, and wise up, meaning to stop being naive. And the -wise ending on other words — clockwise, otherwise, lengthwise — is a separate suffix meaning in the manner of.
1adjectivewiseShowing good judgement gained from experience.
“She is the wisest person I know and says almost nothing.”
2adjectivesensibleSensible, of a decision or action.
“It would be wise to book ahead.”
3adjectiveawareAware of something that was meant to be hidden.
“Nobody was any the wiser.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
wise is a quality of judgement.
Old English wis comes from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to see — the same root as vision, wit, guide and the Latin videre. Knowing and seeing are the same idea in almost every European language, and wise is English's oldest survivor of it.
Proto-Indo-European
*weyd-
Middle English
wys
English, today
wise
Built from
From Middle English wys. From Middle English wys, wyse, from Old English wīs (“wise”), from Proto-Germanic wīsaz (“knowledgeable, wise”), from Proto-Indo-European wéydos (“seeing; knowledge”), from weyd- (“to see”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA