Dictionary

dampish en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ˈdæmpɪʃ/

Etymology

Etymology tree English damp Proto-Indo-European *-iskos Proto-Germanic *-iskaz Proto-West Germanic *-isk Old English -isċ Middle English -isch English -ish English dampish From damp + -ish.

Meanings

1. (obsolete) Characterised by noxious vapours; misty, smoky.
   • c. 1600, author unknown, once attributed to William Shakespeare, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, London: J.M. Dent, 1897, Act I, Scene 3 https://archive.org/details/merrydevilofedmo00fabe We'll first hang Enfield in such rings of mist / As never rose from any dampish fen: / I'll make the brinèd sea to rise at Ware, / And drown the marshes unto Stratford Bridge;
   • All suddenly dim woxe the dampish ayre, / And griesly shadowes couered heauen bright [...]. 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
2. Moderately damp or moist.
   • Miles of long, dark-brown, dampish-looking galleries stretch away to the right and left, and though devoid of the picturesque festoons of fungi which decorate the London Dock vaults, exhibit a sufficient degree of mouldiness to give them an air of respectable antiquity. 1879, Henry Vizetelly, chapter X, in Facts about Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines, London: Ward, Lock & Co, page 111:
   • I remember very clearly the feeling of sitting there reading it; the dampish clay of the trench bottom underneath me, the constant shifting of my legs out of the way as men hurried stopping down the trench, the crack-crack-crack of bullets a foot or two overhead. 1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VI, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC:
   • I was four but I turned four hundred maybe, Encountering the ancient dampish feel Of a clay floor. Maybe four thousand even. 1991, Seamus Heaney, “Squarings xl”, in Seeing Things, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, page 94:
   • Her hand was warm, lying there in his, dampish, fingers interlaced with his. 2006, William Trevor, “An Afternoon”, in Cheating at Canasta, New York: Viking, published 2007, page 99:

Forms

Deriveds

dampishly · dampishness

Translations (1)

hy խոնավավուն (moderately damp or moist)