What's the origin of the neologism "-ish", as in "I'll meet you at sevenish" or "He looked a little sheepish"? I'm curious about its etymology.
Well, first, it's hardly a neologism; the suffix
-ish has, in one sense or another, been in English since the beginning. But some of its senses are comparatively new, it is true.
Our
-ish is a suffix that forms adjectives from nouns or other adjectives. Some of the senses existed in Old English (then spelled
-isc but pronounced the same way), such as 'of, being, or pertaining to', used to form adjectives indicating a national, ethnic, or religious origin (
British, Jewish).
A very common sense is 'after the manner of; having the characteristics of; like', used chiefly to form adjectives, sometimes derogative. There were a small number of words in this sense in Old English, of which
cildisc 'childish' and
cierlisc 'churlish' are among the few to have made it to the present. Among the many others, from the Middle English period or later, are
babyish, boyish, clownish, foolish, girlish, and
selfish. Your
sheepish shows this meaning, in the original sense 'like a sheep, as in meekness or docility', and hence 'embarrassed or bashful', the main current sense.
A related meaning is 'addicted to; inclined or tending to':
bookish, thievish. From the early nineteenth century, this sense became very common in nonce-coinages such as
Mark Twainish, Queen Anne-ish, jolly-good-fellowish, etc.
Finally, the last main sense formed from nouns is 'near; approximately', used with numbers, as
thirtyish 'about thirty (years old)', or your
sevenish 'about seven (o'clock)'. (Old joke: prostitute is working a party with her appointment book. "I can see you around eightish, Mike, and I have time for Bill at nineish." She looks around. "Tenish, anyone?") This sense is the rather recent one, but is still not really a neologism, as it has been in use since the early twentieth century.
The adjective-to-adjective sense is 'somewhat; rather':
oldish; reddish; sweetish. This apparently originated among color terms and then spread to other adjectives. It is also unique to English; other languages with a cognate to
-ish use a different ending for their color adjectives.
An ending cognate with
-ish is found in various Germanic languages. It is related to the Greek diminutive suffix
-iskos; the suffix
-esque (
picturesque; Kafkaesque) is ultimately from the Germanic source of
-ish but was borrowed through French.
There is another suffix
-ish, found chiefly in verbs borrowed from French or sometimes Latin:
nourish, perish; extinguish. There are some other words in
-ish that do not come from either of these, but had different endings that ended up getting pronounced, and spelled,
-ish.
jk
