Dictionary

penny-dreadfulish en · ADJ

Etymology

From penny dreadful + -ish.

Meanings

1. Resembling or characteristic of a penny dreadful.
   • She has been quite penny-dreadfulish-sword-and-mask mysterious lately; she goes about with her lips pursed up and a sparkle in her eye. 1913, Doris Egerton Jones, Pied Piper, George W. Jacobs & Company, page 254:
   • "Dracula the Un-Dead” forsakes the epistolary format of its forebear in favor of a penny-dreadfulish narrative pitting the first book’s surviving characters against a monomaniacal vampire countess. 2009 October 22, Jan Stuart, “Fiction Chronicle”, in The New York Times:
   • But if Sedlar and Ales aren't the same, then there's only one conclusion to come to: they bear an uncanny resemblance to each other! We've been evading that conclusion because it seems—er—pulpy and penny-dreadfulish; but you can't get around it. 1936, Barnaby Ross, Drury Lane's Last Case, republished, March 1946, as by Ellery Queen, Little, Brown, page 250

Forms