Weatherwise

Part of speech: adjective, adverb

Definitions

1. In terms of or considering weather and atmospheric conditions
2. From the perspective of weather or climate factors
3. As far as weather conditions are concerned or relevant

Etymology: "Weatherwise" is a compound of "weather" and "wise," and its two parts meet in a way that is easy to misread. The "wise" here is not the "wise" of "wisdom" alone. It comes from the Old English "wīs," meaning "way" or "manner," which gave us the suffix "-wise" in words like "clockwise" and "likewise," where it means "in the manner of." In that sense, "weatherwise" literally means "in the manner of the weather," so to be weatherwise is to be knowledgeable about or attuned to the weather, the way a person might be streetwise or moneywise. Because the word's sense rests on that older suffix, it is easy to assume it shares a root with "wisdom," and the two are indeed related through the same Germanic stem, but the everyday meaning has grown from the suffix rather than the noun. This is why the word is most often applied to people who read the sky well, such as sailors, farmers, and anglers, whose skill comes from long observation rather than formal study.