wise man

plural wise men · alternative wiseman

1. A man who is wise.

   But where's that wiseman, that would not be I, / If she would not deny?

   1635, John Donne, The Triple Foole

   2 more examples

   That is the reason, why some say, that the wiseman liveth as long as he ought, and not so long as he can.

   1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 3, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

   Mr Lieberman is arguably the last surviving example of a peculiar Washington species: the Wise Man who is willing to put party allegiance aside when it comes to big issues such as foreign policy.

   2005 December 14, “A wise man in Washington”, in The Economist

2. A man who is a sage or seer.

   Steady old Väinämöinen / the everlasting wise man [translating tietäjä] / was driving along his roads / pacing out his ways / in those glades of Väinö-land / on the Kalevala heaths.

   1989, Elias Lönnrot, translated by Keith Bosley, The Kalevala, section III

3. A magus or wizard, now especially one of the three biblical magi.

   Some of the other charms employed by the wise men had a more tangled pedigree.

   1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 174