-ish
/ɪʃ/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
New Zealand/əʃ/
-ish suffix: typical of, similar to, being like.
Suffix (1)
-ish
- Typical of, similar to, being like.
- Her face had a girlish charm.
- […] ; for she had recently developed a magpie[-]ish tendency to appropriate and conceal trifling matters; […]1859, Harriet Parr (as Holme Lee), Against Wind and Tide, volume 1, p. 273
- Somewhat, rather.
- Her face had a bluish tinge.
- 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.1935, George Goodchild, chapter 5, in Death on the Centre Court
- About, approximately.
- We arrived at tennish. We arrived tennish.
- I couldn't tell his precise age, but he looked fiftyish.
- Of, belonging, or relating to (a nationality, place, language or similar association with something).
- British, Cornish, Danish, English, Finnish, Irish, Jewish, Kentish, Polish, Scottish, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish etc.
Suffix (2)
-ish
- An ending found on some verbs; see usage notes.
-ish meaning in Hindi, Urdu and Arabic
-ish in Hindi
- appended to adjectives
- सा sā
-ish in Urdu
- -ish, -esque
- سا sā
-ish in Arabic
- appended to roots denoting names of nations or regions
- ـِيّ -iyy
Synonyms of -ish
1 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Origin of -ish
From Middle English -isch, -issh, from Old English -isċ (“-ish”, suffix), from Proto-West Germanic *-isk, 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; Russian -ский (-skij); and the Ancient Greek diminutive suffix -ίσκος (-ískos). Doublet of -esque and -ski.
From Middle English -ishen, -ischen, -issen, from Old French -iss-, -is- (a termination of the stem of some forms [present participle, etc.] of certain verbs), from Latin -ēscere, -īscere (an inchoative suffix), the formative -esc-, -isc- (-sc-, Greek -σκ- (-sk-)) being ultimately cognate with English -ish (Etymology 1). See -esce, -escent, etc.
Questions about -ish
- What does -ish mean?
- -ish means typical of, similar to, being like.
- What is -ish in Hindi?
- -ish in Hindi is सा (sā). See -ish meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is -ish?
- -ish is a suffix.
- How do you pronounce -ish?
- -ish is pronounced /ɪʃ/ (US).
Words near -ish in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: -ish (page history and authors); سا (Urdu) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us--ish.ogg.
Cite this entry: “-ish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.