Jewish
adj, name, noun, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A Jew. proscribed
"The Statue of Liberty. A French gift with a poem made by a Jewish."
- 1 Following the religion of Judaism.
"There are many Jewish people in France."
- 2 Of or relating to Jews, their ethnicities or cultures.
"I tried some traditional Jewish food yesterday."
- 3 Greedy, miserly. dated, derogatory, offensive
""Vanity!" ſays ſhe, haughtily, "What is vanity in you, ſir, is propriety in me. You aſk a Jewiſh price for it, Mr. Graves; but have it I will, if only to ſpite Mr. Eſmond.""
- 4 Yiddish.
"The roots of American Jewry are not in the Middle East but in Europe—their Jewish style, their strong Jewish words, their strong nostalgia, their actual, weighable history, all this issues from their European origins. Grandpa did not hail from Haifa—he was a Jewish humanist, a spiritual, believing Jew, who complained not in an antique tongue called Hebrew but in colorful, rich, vernacular Yiddish."
- 1 of or relating to Jews or their culture or religion wordnet
- 1 The Hebrew language. informal, proscribed
"I can't speak Jewish; I can't even understand it."
- 2 The Yiddish language. informal, proscribed
"We believe that although he speaks Jewish, he speaks Russian quite badly and pretentiously."
Example
More examples"His wife's second cousin was a member of the Jewish ruling council."
Etymology
From Jew + -ish. Compare Middle English Judewissh (“Jewish”), Old English Iūdēisċ (“Jewish”), Dutch joodsch, joods (“Jewish”), German jüdisch (“Jewish”), Danish jødisk (“Jewish”), Swedish judisk (“Jewish”), Gothic 𐌾𐌿𐌳𐌰𐌹𐍅𐌹𐍃𐌺𐍃 (judaiwisks, “Jewish”). See also Yiddish.
Related phrases
More for "jewish"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.