Adjective: thievish
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more thievish |
| Superlative | most thievish |
Sample Sentences
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I tel you true my hart is ſwolne with wrath,
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On this ſame theeuish villain Tamburlain.
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And of that false Coſroe, my traiterous brother,
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Would it not grieue a King to be so abuſ’d?
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And haue a thouſand horſmen tane away? [c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene ii:]
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What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food,
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Or with a base and boist'rous sword enforce
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A thievish living on the common road? [c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii], lines 675-77:]
Adjectives inflected like thievish
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle English thevysch, equivalent to thief + -ish. Cognate with Saterland Frisian däifsk (“thievish”), Dutch diefs (“thievish”), German Low German deevsk (“thievish”), German diebisch (“thievish”). See: German Adjectives '
diebisch'.