-ish

From Middle English -ish, -isch, from Old English -isċ (“-ish”, suffix), from Proto-Germanic *-iskaz (“-ish”), from Proto-Indo-European *-iskos. Cognate with Dutch -s; German -isch; whence Dutch -isch; Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish -isk or -sk; Lithuanian -iškas; and the Ancient Greek diminutive suffix -ίσκος (-ískos).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪʃ/

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-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.

• His, IHS, Shi, his, shi

-ish f

1. -ish (language)

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

-ish

1. -self (emphatic)

• 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).

• -s, -sh

• -yn
• -syn

-ish

1. Alternative form of -yssh

• “-ish, (suf.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 16 June 2018.