Ish - where does it come from?

miamee

Hello there,
I have an interest in etymology but I am an amateur with an interest. I was talking with a friend at the weekend and we wondered where '-ish' comes from. E.g., I'll see you there, about 7-ish.

From searching online it seems to come from old English '-isc' which in turn comes from German 'isch' but does anyone else have anything to add to that? The search wasn't particularly informative, maybe some of you would know where to look.

Boulevardier

This thread on wordreference.com may throw some light on it:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=54053

Janey_Mac

miamee wrote: »

Hello there,
I have an interest in etymology but I am an amateur with an interest. I was talking with a friend at the weekend and we wondered where '-ish' comes from. E.g., I'll see you there, about 7-ish.

From searching online it seems to come from old English '-isc' which in turn comes from German 'isch' but does anyone else have anything to add to that? The search wasn't particularly informative, maybe some of you would know where to look.

You don't say what sort of extra information you're looking for, so I will assume (and please correct me if I'm wrong) you're looking for more detail on the suffix's meaning through history.

It's not true that the word came from German "-isch"; it's more like they are cousins who both came from Proto-Germanic *-iskaz. Proto-Germanic is what we call the language which through gradual changes became German, English, Danish, Norwegian and many others. It has never been written down but linguists have reconstructed it based on patterns of changes in words in its daughter languages through the centuries. The * on the Proto-Germanic word above is to mark that it is a reconstructed form.

In Proto-Germanic, *-iskaz was attached to nouns to make adjectives meaning "to do with NOUN or having characteristics of NOUN"- like with modern English "boyish" for example.

Ultimately, the Proto-Germanic *-iskaz descends from Proto-Indo-European *-isko-. (Proto-Indo-European is the reconstructed ancestor language for lots of languages that are now spoken all across Europe, the Middle East and India.)

This all came from wiktionary.org, btw, and all I had to do was google suffix ish etymology. It's a good resource if you're doing more word-sleuthing.

Also, sorry if I'm explaining stuff you already know!

Janey_Mac

Janey_Mac wrote: »

You don't say what sort of extra information you're looking for, so I will assume (and please correct me if I'm wrong) you're looking for more detail on the suffix's meaning through history.

It's not true that the word came from German "-isch"; it's more like they are cousins who both came from Proto-Germanic *-iskaz. Proto-Germanic is what we call the language which through gradual changes became German, English, Danish, Norwegian and many others. It has never been written down but linguists have reconstructed it based on patterns of changes in words in its daughter languages through the centuries. The * on the Proto-Germanic word above is to mark that it is a reconstructed form.

In Proto-Germanic, *-iskaz was attached to nouns to make adjectives meaning "to do with NOUN or having characteristics of NOUN"- like with modern English "boyish" for example.

Ultimately, the Proto-Germanic *-iskaz descends from Proto-Indo-European *-isko-. (Proto-Indo-European is the reconstructed ancestor language for lots of languages that are now spoken all across Europe, the Middle East and India.)

This all came from wiktionary.org, btw, and all I had to do was google suffix ish etymology. It's a good resource if you're doing more word-sleuthing.

Also, sorry if I'm explaining stuff you already know!

And I forgot to actually mention the change in meaning. If you can use NOUN-ish to mean "similar to NOUN" it's not too big a step to think of it as "like NOUN but not exactly NOUN".

So if you want to meet someone somewhere in the region of six o'clock, but not necessarily six on the dot, you can say "six-ish".

Or if you're trying to describe a colour that isn't very obvious, you can say "greenish yellow" because it's yellow with attributes of green.

miamee

Thanks both of you, you have really helped. I studied linguistics and etymology for one semester in college and found it really interesting BUT it was in relation to Italian, not English. I hadn't heard or read about Proto-Germanic before so it seems I have lots to discover. Those referencelinks will come in handy too. Thanks Janey_Mac and Boulevardier