Rightwise

From Middle English rightwise, rightwis, from Old English rihtwīs ("righteous, just; right, justifiable"), corresponding to right + -wise. The second element was later confused with or assimilated to -ous, leading to the modern spelling righteous.

1905, Richard Chenevix Trench, English Past and Present Chapter , ...'righteousness', or 'rightwiseness', as it would once more accurately have been written, for 'righteous' is a corruption of 'rightwise', remains, but its correspondent 'wrongwiseness' has been taken;

Full definition of rightwise

Adjective

1. Obsolete spelling of righteous 13th-16th century
• 1525?, William Tyndale, Tyndale BibleI came not to call the rightwise but the synners to repentaunce.
• 1531, Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke named The Governour: Book IIIAnd Plato sayeth that it is extreme iniustice he to seme rightwise which in dede is uniuste.
• 2006, Percy Grainger, edited by Malcolm Gillies, David Pear, and Mark Carroll, Self-portrait of Percy Grainger, page 167:Man feels maddened by his pent-uppness, & woman seems to understand that a rightwise man's cruel-fain-th is part of his hunger for women.

Presumably from Old English rihtwīs, reinforced by reanalysis as right + wise.

Adverb

1. (rare) Rightly (correctly or justly); rightfully.
• 1915, Howard Pyle, The story of King Arthur and his knights (page 36)And, after that fourth trial, sundry of the kings and many of the lesser barons and knights and all of the commons cried out that these were trials enough, and that Arthur had assuredly approved himself to be rightwise King ...
• 1969, in Topic, issues 17-18, page 37:... made indubitably clear that Arthur was rightwise king of the realm ...
• 2003, Nancy McKenzie, Grail Prince, page 192:"That it was Maximus's sword which Merlin found for Arthur and fixed in the stone of Lludyn's Hill by magic arts so that none but he who was rightwise born King of all the Britons could pull it out."

Pronunciation

• RP enPR: rÄ«tʹwÄ«z, IPA: /ˈɹaɪtwaɪz/
• US enPR: rÄ«tʹwÄ«z', IPA: /ˈɹaɪtËŒwaɪz/

right + -wise

Adverb

1. (rare) By a rightward path; rightwards, rightwardly; clockwise (in a clockwise manner).
• 1890, G. C. Macaulay, The History of Herodotus, translated into English:and doing so they say that they do it themselves rightwise and the Hellenes leftwise.
• 2004, Christian P. Robert, George Casella, Monte Carlo statistical methods, page 336:Similarly, his "doubling procedure" consists in the same random starting interval ... whose length is doubled (leftwise or rightwise at random) recursively till both ends are outside the slice.

Adjective

1. (rare) Rightward (to or from the right side); on the right side.
• 1866, Specifications and drawings of patents relating to electricity issued by the United States from July 1, 1884, to July 1, 1885, volume 39, published by the United States Patent Office:... that, abutting against the end of H, or nearly so, it will lock said bar as against a return or rightwise motion, and then said bar will be locked as against a reverse motion, and, being locked, its flop D cannot be rotated back, ...
• 2006, Arne Røkkum, Nature, ritual, and society in Japan's Ryukyu Islands, page 151:The leftwise action aims at what drifts out of the nunka domain of the nefarious. Similarly for mortuary arrangements, what is leftwise is more momentous than what is rightwise.
2. (rare) Clockwise, moving clockwise.
• 1966, P. H. Pott, Yoga and yantra: their interrelation and their significance for Indian archeology, page 66:In Tibet the compass points are described in a rightwise circle; one speaks there of east-south and west-north instead of south-east and north-west.
• 2006, Steve Lawhead, The Silver Hand, page 20:Then he stepped before me, and I bade him walk three times in a rightwise circle around me. "This is embarrassing," he growled through clenched teeth as he passed the first time.

Related terms

• rightways
• rightwiseness