Iiiishhhh....

Hold On. before you think its about the Devdas '...ishhhh' song that made Shreya Ghosal the talk of tinsel town.. its not that.

Its about English . Yeah its the 'ish' in english and other words in English that I want to talk about.
I find all the languages very fascinating. If you are speaking with someone, and suddenly you start hearing stuff as a third person and a small thread runs at the back of your mind thinking who decided that a wooden plank with 4 legs will be called table, and when you abruptly blow wind outta your nose, and close your eyes and jerk and wink all at the same time.. that bunch of actions is called a sneeze! You go Wow !!! in that same thread. And another thread starts.. why if we find something amazing, its WOW?? How come everyone in the world understands a WOW? who decided that? Why not ZOZ? why not .......

Ok. More about this language facination in detail, in some other post.

There are words in English. (and I believe the word 'English' as well, for that matter British, Polish, Irish .....)
These words end with 'ish'. Like xyz-ish. And they mean almost xyz. Like xyz. Kinda xyz.
Let me explain.

Sheepish. He smiled a sheepish smile....
Foolish. All knew his act was foolish..
Devilish. A devilish grin spread on his face..
(I am not sure if Sheepish means like a sheep.. but imagining a sheepish smile, and a sheep smiling.. kinda strikes a parallel.. ;-) )
Foolish definitely means like a fool, and devilish means like a devil. So when 'ish' is there, as in xyz-ish, then it might mean one of these: not exactly xyz, but like xyz, kinda xyz ..Ok I said that already.

In my college days, I came to know what a powerful thing this 'ish' is. And it was so very Okayish to use this ish in every possible bit of conversation.
English never generically gave these words for us to use, but we can pass some of these with the exact flavor that we want , to convey our message.
See these:

....The dress I bought the outher day is pinkish with a satinish feel...
( So I understand that the dress is kinda pink, but NOT pink per say and its feel is kinda satin but not satin per say! Perfect! )

..Ok then . See you there at sevenish today evening.
(So I understand that we are meeting aound 7, but definitely not at 7.00 )

The film was OK ish you know..
(So I understand that the film was not exactly okay, but pretty close to being okay! )

.... see that. That darkish lady with a roundish face? ...
(I think by now even you all got the hang of it, lady who is not exactly dark, but neither fair, and she has a face that is not exaclty round, but very close to round! )

We already have accepted words around like hellish (like hell) , bullish (like bull) and all.
But improvising with all possible adjectives and creating superlatives degrees of description with just 3 simple letters! thatz kinda greatish.

Well.. thats all about the post. Wanted to put this on paper (or in print you can say) atleast once. And am glad I did! :-)