Word.ws English Dictionary

wellish

wellish adjective: somewhat well; reasonable; adequate.

Adjective

wellish (comparative more wellish, superlative most wellish)

  1. Somewhat well; reasonable; adequate.
    • Come, I say, old boy, you are going it strongish: rot me, if the garden wasn't pretty wellish.1849, Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays, Dramas, Farces and Extravagances, page 25
    • Knowing human nature as we do we can safely prophesy that the State Council will merrily go its round of life in spite of the distant rumblings of the Boycott war-cry from the rather wellish dry North1933, Samuel Ernest N. Nicholas, Commercial Ceylon, page 295
  2. Somewhat well; in okay but not great health.
    • The Emperor looked wellish but a bad colour.1980, Sir Edward Goschen, Christopher Henry Durham Howard, The diary of Edward Goschen, 1900-1914, page 205
    • Sometimes I feel wellish here, sometimes very bad; never well, I never can be well again without the miracle.2003, Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, Matthew Spencer, Elected Friends: Robert Frost & Edward Thomas to One Another

Adverb

wellish (comparative more wellish, superlative most wellish)

  1. Somewhat well; in a fairly satisfactory manner.
    • He knew his letters pretty wellish, but no more.1885, Henry Ward Beecher, The Christian Union - Volume 31, page 28
    • “Fine,” I relent. “Yes. It's going wellish.”2014, Skylar Dorset, The Girl Who Read the Stars

Examples of wellish in a sentence

  • All might be well, or wellish, if Bill Bryden 's production had more tension and emotional intensity.2006, Theatre Record, page 139:
  • Prior to that day, everything I had tried on my healing journey hadn't worked very well or had only worked “wellish” enough.2019, Anita Swanson Speake, Heartsong: Living with a Dying Heart: A Memoir:

Forms of wellish

Adjective
comparativemore wellish
superlativemost wellish
Adverb
comparativemore wellish
superlativemost wellish

Origin of wellish

From well + -ish.

Questions about wellish

What does wellish mean?
Wellish means somewhat well; reasonable; adequate.
How do you use wellish in a sentence?
All might be well, or wellish, if Bill Bryden 's production had more tension and emotional intensity.
What part of speech is wellish?
Wellish can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near wellish in the dictionary

  1. wellingtonia
  2. Wellingtonian
  3. Wellingtonians
  4. wellingtonias
  5. wellingtons
  6. wellish
  7. Welliver
  8. Wellivers
  9. wellknown
  10. wellmaker
  11. wellmakers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wellish (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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