Word.ws English Dictionary

pokerish

pokerish adjective: unsafe, dangerous.

Adjective

pokerish (comparative more pokerish, superlative most pokerish)

  1. (US, archaic, colloquial) unsafe, dangerous
    • John even went so far as to admit that it "looked kind of pokerish," and he was glad they were in so comfortable a place.1860, William Taylor Adams, Little By Little
  2. (archaic, colloquial) nervous, uneasy
    • I wish Uncle Jed hadn't said what he did," he mused, when fairly beyond the town, "it makes me feel kind of pokerish; why didn't I think to bring my gun along?1894, Edward S. Ellis, Brave Tom
  3. Stiff, like a poker.

Forms of pokerish

comparativemore pokerish
superlativemost pokerish

Origin of pokerish

From poker + -ish. See poker (“evil spirit”).

Words formed from pokerish

Questions about pokerish

What does pokerish mean?
Pokerish means unsafe, dangerous.
What part of speech is pokerish?
Pokerish is an adjective.

Words near pokerish in the dictionary

  1. pokerfaced
  2. pokerholic
  3. pokerholics
  4. pokering
  5. pokering up
  6. pokerish
  7. pokerishly
  8. pokerishness
  9. pokerlike
  10. pokeroot
  11. pokeroots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pokerish (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: “pokerish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pokerish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.