pebble-wise

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He had wandered through Hungarian horse-fairs, hunted shy crafty beasts on lonely Balkan hillsides, dropped himself pebble-wise into the stagnant human pool of some Bulgarian monastery, threaded his way through the strange racial mosaic of Salonika, listened with amused politeness to the shallow ultra-modern opinions of a voluble editor or lawyer in some wayside Russian town, or learned wisdom from a chance tavern companion, one of the atoms of the busy ant-stream of men and merchandise that moves untiringly round the shores of the Black Sea.

What does "pebble-wise" mean?

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Type: Question • Score: 8 • Views: 1,051 • Replies: 12

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@Stacy2013,

Like a pebble dropped into a pool.

Don't try to fit this into an ordinary conversation unless you want to receive some strange looks.

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@Stacy2013,

It apparently is an attempt at a literary metaphor. It just means at one point, the subject of the paragraph (the protagonist?) found himself visiting a Bulgarian monastery in which the author doesn't seemingly have a positive view of the people living and working there presently.

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@tsarstepan,

A word of caution: I wouldn't use "presently" like that. AmE has a different meaning for "presently" than in standard English anyway, but this seems different from that.

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@Stacy2013,

Wise like a pebble quietly sinking to the bottom of the human pool.

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@oristarA,

Wisdom has nothing to do with it.

Here's an explanation of "wise" as a suffix:

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.

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@Roberta,

Nice one, Roberta.

Contrary-wise is one you could add.

This "wise" comes into the English language, usually only as a suffix nowadays, from the German Weise - (noun) manner, way.
auf diese Weise - in this way.

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@McTag,

McTag wrote:

A word of caution: I wouldn't use "presently" like that. AmE has a different meaning for "presently" than in standard English anyway, but this seems different from that.

Presently means

1. Before long; in a short while (the doctor will see you presently)
2. At the present time; now (we are presently waiting in line for our turn)

Both meanings are correct in both American and British English, but (1) is by far the majority usage in BrE and (2) in AmE.

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@McTag,

McTag wrote:

Contrary-wise is one you could add.

Contrariwise?

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@contrex,

Don't you think that's kind of daft? (I don't agree with it, anyway, but maybe that's just me.)
According to that, presently means at the present time (=currently) and also not at the present time (= shortly)
The Americans have done this, damn them. They don't understand anything.

I believe some dictionaries are yielding to the American meaning, the poor misguided fools.

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@McTag,

Here's another one: momentarily

which means "for a moment" (standard English) but is taken to mean "in a moment" in much American usage.

"The aircraft will be landing momentarily". (British passengers panic.)

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A couple of centuries ago, 'momentarily' had four meanings -

(1) Instantly
(2) From moment to moment
(3) Briefly
(4) Very soon

(1) and (2) are pretty well obsolete; (4) used to be quite rare but gained traction in America around 1900 onwards by conflation with (2). Both (3) and (4) are currently valid in US & British usage but (4) is relatively rare in current British usage. Some British dictionaries (e.g. Chambers 1867) gave 'momently' as the proper word for meaning (4) but this never really took hold.

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@Roberta,

Roberta wrote:

Wisdom has nothing to do with it.

Here's an explanation of "wise" as a suffix:

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.

Good point.
I should have noticed such use of "wise."

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pebble-wise

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