Meanings
- Close to the number forty
- About forty years old.
I’m going to start a support group of us fortyish guys with this problem. LUMPS, we’ll call our group. Losing Unwanted Midriff Plumpitude Sensibly.
1994, Sam Cook, “[Gerbils and other realities of the forties] Too much me”, in If This Is Mid-Life… Where’s the Crisis?, Duluth, Minn.: Pfeifer-Hamilton, →ISBN, page 120
- Any number close to forty.
The day was cloudy, and the temperature was about fortyish.
2006, Harold F. Kratch, One Soldier's Memories, page 1093 more examples
One problem it drops in our laps is to have developed all fortyish of its species within our temperate area, from the Falklands to the central temperate Andes.
1993, Quarterly bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society, volumes 61-62, Alpine Garden Society (Great Britain), page 348A great many black men are Mark Lawrence's age (fortyish), height (six-two-ish), weight (one-seventy-ish), and complexion (a reddish medium brown) that hints of a childhood of freckles and umber-red hair
2003, Randall Robinson, The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each OtherIn my day, more often than not, you had to break rank to join the very few fortyish-aged women (renegades) promoted
2004, Jean Lau Chin, The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination, page 46
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*kʷetwṓr
- Proto-Germanic*fedwōr
- Proto-Indo-European*déḱm̥
- Proto-Indo-European*déḱm̥-t(-s)
- Proto-Germanic*tegun(dz)
- Proto-Germanic*tigiwiz
- Proto-Germanic*fedwōr tigiwiz
- Proto-West Germanic*feuwar tigiwi
- Old Englishfēowertiġ
- Middle Englishfourty
- Englishforty
- Englishfortyish
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
fortyish. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fortyish
“fortyish.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fortyish. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “fortyish,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fortyish.
Source: fortyish on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.