It almost sounds insulting, like you’re saying the person is like a Jew but not quite. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other race, religions or cultures that end in “ish”. Is it related to or of the same origin as Yidd"ish"?
Brit-ish, Ir-ish, Scot-ish, Engl-ish…
I’m English and I’m also British, I know people that are Scottish, Irish, Danish and Swedish as well.
:smack: OK, the top of my head is pretty shallow. So, why Brit-ish, etc? Have we bastardized the “ish” to mean “like”?
Scottish? Swedish? Finnish? Danish? And if we’re not requiring that the “-ish” is added to a noun designating the person, there’s Spanish, Irish, and so on. Or did I misunderstand?
So it’s a European thing?
Spanish, Turkish, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Polish, Cornish?
Wiktionary says it’s Proto-Indo-European, which is a mouthful but makes sense.
-ish just comes from the old English suffix used to form collective.
Someone from Spain is therefore Spainish. Now it’s used to indicate likeness in an approximate way, so we might say “Portugal is a bit Spain-ish”.
In Kent there’s a tradition that anyone born on the west side of the River Meadway is a Man of Kent and anyone born on the east side is a Kentish man (presumably you have to be male).
Stylish, freakish, boorish, hawkish, standoffish, ghoulish…
sigh
There was a link in the first post after your OP that answered your question.
That was the result of an edit. I didn’t go back and reread the post.
To be fair, I edited that link in later… :o
And “Yiddish”, etymologically, is “Jewish”…Yid (a pejorative now), from German Jude, “Jew”.
Lots of responses, but no one addressed this part of the OP:
No one has mentioned races, like Blackish or Aboriginish. Or cultures like Arabish or Deafish. Or even religions, like Buddhish or Baptish.
All we have are nationalities, like Polish and Finnish. Could this be an argument for Jewish being a nationality?
What about Kurdish?
From Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, quote is off the cuff from memory.
“{Bloody Moors.} Aziz – what kind of a name is that? Welsh?”
“Moorish!”
I would argue that eg Polish and Turkish are ethnicities, and Jewish can be an ethnicity (although it isn’t necessarily).
Go fish!
Jewesque
You could call a new convert a “Jewbie”…
“You lit the candle for the wrong night, ya jewb!”