Word.ws English Dictionary

dampish

/ˈdæmpɪʃ/

dampish adjective: characterised by noxious vapours; misty, smoky.

Adjective

dampish (comparative more dampish, superlative most dampish)

  1. (obsolete) Characterised by noxious vapours; misty, smoky.
    • All suddenly dim woxe the dampish ayre, / And griesly shadowes couered heauen bright [...].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • We'll first hang Enfield in such rings of mist / As never rose from any dampish fen: / I'll make the brinèd sea to rise at Ware, / And drown the marshes unto Stratford Bridge;c. 1600, author unknown, once attributed to William Shakespeare, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, London: J.M. Dent, 1897, Act I, Scene 3 https://archive.org/details/merrydevilofedmo00fabe
  2. Moderately damp or moist.
    • Miles of long, dark-brown, dampish-looking galleries stretch away to the right and left, and though devoid of the picturesque festoons of fungi which decorate the London Dock vaults, exhibit a sufficient degree of mouldiness to give them an air of respectable antiquity.1879, Henry Vizetelly, chapter X, in Facts about Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines, London: Ward, Lock & Co, page 111
    • I remember very clearly the feeling of sitting there reading it; the dampish clay of the trench bottom underneath me, the constant shifting of my legs out of the way as men hurried stopping down the trench, the crack-crack-crack of bullets a foot or two overhead.1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VI, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC

Forms of dampish

comparativemore dampish
superlativemost dampish

Origin of dampish

From damp + -ish.

Words formed from dampish

Questions about dampish

What does dampish mean?
Dampish means characterised by noxious vapours; misty, smoky.
What part of speech is dampish?
Dampish is an adjective.
How do you pronounce dampish?
Dampish is pronounced /ˈdæmpɪʃ/.

Words near dampish in the dictionary

  1. damping off
  2. damping ratio
  3. damping ratios
  4. dampingly
  5. dampings
  6. dampish
  7. dampishly
  8. dampishness
  9. damplate
  10. dampless
  11. damply

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dampish (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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