Word.ws English Dictionary

bairnish

bairnish adjective: having the manners of a child; childish; silly.

Adjective

bairnish (comparative more bairnish, superlative most bairnish)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) Having the manners of a child; childish; silly.

Forms of bairnish

comparativemore bairnish
superlativemost bairnish
alternative Northern Englandbarnish

Origin of bairnish

From Middle English *bernis, *barnisch, from Old English *bearnisċ and Old Norse bernskr (“childish”), from Proto-Germanic *barniskaz (“childish”), equivalent to bairn + -ish. Cognate with Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐍂𐌽𐌹𐍃𐌺𐍃 (barnisks, “childish”).

Words formed from bairnish

  • bairnishlake
  • bairnishness

Words that rhyme with bairnish

Questions about bairnish

What does bairnish mean?
Bairnish means having the manners of a child; childish; silly.
What part of speech is bairnish?
Bairnish is an adjective.

Words near bairnish in the dictionary

  1. bairn's part
  2. bairn-time
  3. bairned
  4. bairnhood
  5. bairning
  6. bairnish
  7. bairnless
  8. bairnliest
  9. bairnlike
  10. bairnly
  11. bairns

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bairnish (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.

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Cite this entry: “bairnish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bairnish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.