- 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!
You can find us on our website https://theslangpodcast.com and from there you can see our transcript and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many more apps.
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