-esque , adjectival suffix;
1. Characteristic of; resembling or suggesting the style of
This is perhaps my favorite suffix. Why? I don't know. I'm a word person, we have things like a "favorite suffix." Don't judge.
Anyway, -esque comes from French -esque, which was borrowed from Italian -esco. The Italian word is related to Medieval Latin -iscus, which was adopted from a Germanic source. It is related to Old High German -isc, which is the forebear of -ish. -Ish and -esque are used in very similar ways, but -esque tends to stick to words that came to English from Italian via French.
No comments:
Post a Comment