Fortyish

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Being roughly forty years of age, somewhere in the range between thirty-five and forty-five years old
2. Appearing or estimated to be around forty years old, neither clearly younger nor clearly older than that
3. Of an age near forty, typically describing a person who is somewhat past middle youth but not yet fifty

Etymology: "Fortyish" is a plain combination: the English word "forty" with the suffix "-ish," which is used to mean "somewhat" or "approximately" with an adjective or number. The suffix has an ancient pedigree. It descends from a Proto-Germanic form meaning "of the kind of" or "belonging to," and in Old English it appeared as "-isc," which gave Middle English "-isch" and eventually the modern "-ish." That same suffix is behind words like "English," "Scottish" and "childish," so the ending has been doing this sort of work for well over a thousand years. The number itself has a longer story. "Forty" comes from Old English "fēowertiġ," literally "four tens," built from "fēower" (four) and "tig" (ten). The Old English form was itself a compound built on the four-times-ten pattern, and the "-ty" ending in modern English is a relic of that same "ten" element. Attaching "-ish" to a number is an ordinary, productive pattern in English, so "fortyish" is less an invention than a routine extension of a very old suffix to a very old numeral.

Synonyms: around forty, middle-aged