Learn English – Is “skills-wise” correct English

suffixes

In the following sentence:

…take a technical test, so your team can determine if I am suitable
for the position skills-wise.

Is "skills-wise" legitimate English?

If not, how could I change it to get the same meaning across?

Best Answer

It is a perfectly idiomatic (natural) and productive pattern used in informal English but not common in formal writing.

The parachute deployed at the last moment, a successful trial drama-wise.

'X-wise' acts like an adverb, where X is a noun. It can be translated to 'with respect to X'.

The suffix '-wise' It is being used more and more lately. It can be a little jarring to mix formal and informal registers. Like with any new pattern, it can be used to interesting effect in formal writing, but shouldn't be used too much as it is considered out of place.

The suffix is actually a reuse of the noun version, that is seen in 'in no wise', which is old fashioned. Etymonline comments about this use of 'wise' as

Most common in English now as a word-forming element (as in likewise, clockwise); the adverbial -wise has been used thus since Old English.

The suffix has the feeling to me of sounding old-fashioned, and so I feel like it is being used often in an attempt to sound both erudite (a grammatical way to make an adverb out of a noun) and familiar (an Anglo-Saxon suffix).

As to prevalence (and possible correctness) of 'skills-wise' or 'skillswise', neither appear in a Google Books search, which leads me to believe that it is not accepted as a word by editors. 'Skillswise' is also not recognized by my spellchecker (this is not absolute guarantee of non-wordness; lots of suffixings aren't recognized) but does appear in many titles in a web search, mostly sounding like neologisms. Separating with a hyphen yields few additional hits with a similar feeling.


As to a style choice and your request for an alternative, you could use 'with respect to skills' which is not too formal, or reword to "...if my skills are suitable for the position.", or even ignore it altogether "If I am suitable for the position." because the context already specified technical skills.