Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • A termination in adjectives of French or other Romance origin, meaning ‘having the style or manner of,’ as in grotcsque, picturesq ue, arabesque, Moresque, Dantesque, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • A suffix of certain words from the French, Italian, and Spanish. It denotes manner or style; like.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • suffix In the style or manner of; appended to nouns, especially proper nouns, and forming adjectives.
  • suffix Resembling; appended to nouns, especially proper nouns, and forming adjectives.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French -esque ("-ish, -ic, -esque"), from Italian -esco, from Latin -iscus, of Germanic origin, from Lombardic -isc ("-ish"), from Proto-Germanic *-iskaz (“-ish”), from Proto-Indo-European *-iskos. Cognate with Old High German -isc (German -isch), Old English -isc, Old Norse -iskr, Gothic -𐌹𐍃𐌺𐍃 (-isks). More at -ish.

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