Episode description
Episode description
After a long day at work my partner always asks how I am feeling. I usually reply with one of the two:- hungry-ish or tired-ish.
Ish spelt I-S-H is an informal suffix used to say about or approximately. This informal suffix can be added to many words including numbers or times of the day. For example:
- How old is she?
- Umm 40ish...
- What time will you be at home?’
- Around 2ish...
For centuries now, "ish" has been rather promiscuous in English. In 1894 in an article from The Daily News, a London newspaper of which Charles Dickens was briefly the editor! We can find an example of ish being used while describing a house, they wrote:
- Some huge pile of building, generally much more Queen Anne-ish than the houses of Queen Anne’s own time.
Nowadays ish can be used, not only as a suffix but alone, in this sense ish means more or less the same thing: kind of, thereabouts, in a way.
As described by the linguist Stefanie Kuzmack, ish refers back to a particular idea. So we have a breakaway from a suffix to a stand-alone word. So instead of simply adding ish to an adjective, I am coldish. It can be used alone:
- Are you cold?
- Yeah, ish.
That’s the end of our episode so remember to tune in for our next episode to see what new slang we have in store for you!
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