Moonish

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having the look or pale glow of the moon ; fickle and inconstant in temperament, as the moon was once thought to be
2. Appearing like the moon in shape or brightness ; moody and changeable in the manner traditionally linked with the moon's phases
3. Suggesting the moon in its pale light or round form ; unpredictable and capricious, reflecting old associations between the moon and shifting moods

Etymology: "Moonish" is a plain English formation: the noun "moon" with the suffix "-ish," meaning "somewhat like" or "having the quality of." The adjective traces back to Middle English, where it appeared as "monyssh," so the combination is old enough to have been shaped by the medieval spelling and pronunciation of the period. The more surprising link is a doublet, a pair of words that share a single ancestor but came into English by different routes. "Moonish" and "meniscus" are piecewise doublets: the Greek "mēniskos," meaning "crescent" or "little moon," gave English "meniscus," the name for the curved surface of a liquid or a crescent-shaped lens. Both ultimately spring from the same idea of the moon's crescent, yet one reached English as a Greek-derived technical term and the other grew from native English material.

Synonyms: moonlike, lunar

Antonyms: solar