Definitions

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

  • adjective rare Somewhat old; elderly.

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

  • adjective Somewhat old; elderly.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

elder +‎ -ish

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Examples

  • The bland, elderish, clerical look faded; the face grew strangely young, the right corner of his mouth twisted upward, and his right eyelid drooped in a prodigious, unreverend wink.

    No. 13 Washington Square Leroy Scott 1902

  • The gentleman was the Reverend Mr. Pyecroft; and the Mr. Pyecroft they had first seen: bland, oh, so bland, with that odd, elderish look of his.

    No. 13 Washington Square Leroy Scott 1902

  • He had a confusingly contradictory face, had the Reverend Herbert E. Pyecroft -- for such she learned was his full name; a face customarily sedate and elderish, and then, almost without perceptible change, for swift moments oddly youthful; with a wide mouth, which would suddenly twist up at its right corner as though from some unholy quip of humor, and whose as sudden straightening into a solemn line would show that the unseemly humor had been exorcised.

    No. 13 Washington Square Leroy Scott 1902

  • How it could have come of that colorlessness, -- whether through long sickness or long residence in a tropical climate, -- was a question that perplexed another of the passengers, who would have expected to hear the lady speak any language in the world rather than English; and to whom her companion or attendant was hardly less than herself a mystery, -- being a dragon-like, elderish female, clearly a Yankee by birth, but apparently of many years 'absence from home.

    Suburban Sketches William Dean Howells 1878

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