Badgeresque & Squirrelseeming
There's an English suffix that I know I'm not alone in finding tasty. And that's "esque" which means "in the style of" or "resembling". You can tack it onto anything and people will know what you're getting at. And it always looks cool in the process - as though you've somehow slipped a little French into discours.
Tolkienesque
reminiscent of the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien
There are words in Esperanto like:
groteska
grotesque
pitoreska
picturesque
Where the suffix was so baked into the etymology that it survived into its Esperanto incarnation. It's so deeply baked in, that I had no idea that "grotesque" (which to me just sounds like "resembling a grot" if I take it too literally) actually does have a "resembling x" origin: it comes from a word meaning "work or painting resembling that found in a grotto"!
Alas -esk is not an official Esperanto suffix. But that doesn't stop people trying, taking their courage from words like pitoreska - with enough frequency that the PMEG has a page on it as an unofficial suffix. And to be honest with you, I quite like it.
The official alternative is to just use an existing full word as a suffix that shows the specific desired shade of meaning:
melsimila
badger-similar, bears similarity to a badger (using simila "similar")
melstila
badger-style(d), in the style of a badger (using stilo "style")
melŝajna
badger-seeming, seems like a badger or badgery (using ŝajni "to seem")
Which I suppose all is well and good.
But I can't get over how concise and pleasant that -esk is; wouldn't scuireska "squirrelesque" be pretty cool? Less of a mouthful?
I guess it would be a more general term which could cover any of the above when you didn't need to be so specific.
It does make me wonder what word it would become in it's own right if it got official status. All the official suffixes have usages as individual standalone words, for example:
emo
tendency, propensity (not the emocore subculture!)
From the suffix -em which for a word x makes "tendency toward x":
verema
inclined to tell the truth (from vero "truth")
Perhaps eski is a very general verb that could mean any of "to be similar, seeming, styled".
It feels like a power I want!
