nesh
/nɛʃ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.37 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "haue ye no merueylle sayd the good man therof / for hit semeth wel god loueth yow / for men maye vnderstande a stone is hard of kynde /[…]/ for thou wylt not leue thy synne for no goodnes that god hath sente the / therfor thou arte more than ony stone / and neuer woldest thow be maade neysshe nor by water nor by fyre"
- "And if he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he'll make her as nesh as her mother was."
- "No, tha'd drop down stiff, as dead as a door-knob, wi' thy nesh sides."
- ""I wouldn't have locked up Noakes and stolen a car if I'd known you couldn't pick the lock!" "Aye, exactly, you're nesh, so you needed encouragement.""
Etymology
From Middle English nesh, nesch, nesche, from Old English hnesċe, hnysċe, næsċe (“soft, tender, mild; weak, delicate; slack, negligent; effeminate, wanton”), from Proto-West Germanic *hnaskwī, from Proto-Germanic *hnaskuz (“soft, tender”), from Proto-Indo-European *knēs-, *kenes- (“to scratch, scrape, rub”). Cognate with Scots nesch, nesh (“soft, tender, yielding easily to pressure, sensitive”), Dutch nesch, nes (“wet, moist”), Gothic 𐌷𐌽𐌰𐍃𐌵𐌿𐍃 (hnasqus, “soft, tender, delicate”). Compare also nask, nasky, nasty.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: nesh, hnesċe, *hnaskwī, *hnaskuz, *knēs-, neschen
Usage
- British usage
- Transitive verb
- Intransitive verb