English

Suffix

-ish

1. (appended to many kinds of words) Typical or similar to.

   Her face had a girlish charm.‎

   • 1859, Harriet Parr (as Holme Lee), Against Wind and Tide, volume 1, p. 273:

     […] ; for she had recently developed a magpie[-]ish tendency to appropriate and conceal trifling matters; […]

2. (appended to adjectives) Somewhat.

   Her face had a greenish tinge.‎

   • 1935, George Goodchild, chapter 5, in Death on the Centre Court:

     By one o'clock the place was choc-a-bloc. […] The restaurant was packed, and the promenade between the two main courts and the subsidiary courts was thronged with healthy-looking youngish people, drawn to the Mecca of tennis from all parts of the country.

3. (appended to numbers, especially times and ages) About, approximately.

   We arrived at tennish;  We arrived tennish.‎ (Sometime around ten.)

   I couldn't tell his precise age, but he was fiftyish.‎

4. (appended to roots denoting names of nations or regions) Of a nationality, place, language or similar association with something.

   British, Cornish, Danish, English, Finnish, Irish, Jewish, Kentish, Scottish, Spanish, Swedish etc.‎

Translations

Derived terms

Manx

Suffix

-ish

1. -ish (language)

Usage notes

• Added to names of places or peoples to denote the language spoken in that place or by that people.

Suffix

-ish

1. -self (emphatic)

Usage notes

• Added to prepositional pronouns to add emphasis (not to create a reflexive pronoun).
  • Used in third-person singular feminine (eg mareeish).
  • Used in second-person plural (eg erriuish).

Alternative forms

• -s
• -sh

Related terms

• -yn
• -syn