145: otherwise May 2, 2015

Contractions in English are usually easily separated into their components. The word 'otherwise' is a contraction of what would look like, and in fact is, "other+wise"; nevertheless, when thought about it does not seem to make much sense: where does 'wise' fit in‽ One archaic usage for ‘wise’ was “the manner or extent of something”; this is related in origin to the word 'wit' and it is from this definition of ‘wise’ where the phrase “in no wise” comes.