Austenesque

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having the polished wit, social observation and genteel romance typical of the novels written by Jane Austen
2. Reminiscent of the witty, socially precise world of early nineteenth-century English fiction associated with Jane Austen
3. Evoking the refined manners, marriage-minded plots and ironic tone that characterize the novels of Jane Austen

Etymology: Jane Austen's name became a descriptive adjective by a simple, deliberate route: her surname was joined to "-esque," a suffix borrowed from Italian through French and used in English to mean "in the style of" or "resembling." "Austenesque" thus describes anything that recalls her novels, whether a witty drawing-room exchange, a marriage plot, or a sharp-eyed portrait of social manners. The word has a close relative, "Austenish," and the two are what linguists call piecewise doublets: they formed from the same name with different endings, so they share a root but were not borrowed from one another. "Austenish" follows the older English pattern of adding "-ish" to a name, while "Austenesque" follows the more elaborate pattern used for literary and artistic comparisons, as in "Shakespearean" and "Dickensian."