Meanings
- Synonym of Ket (“the Yeniseian language of the Ket people”).
His tenative suggestion is that the Xiongnu language belonged to the Paleo-Siberian family, now represented only by Kettish, or Yenissei-Ostyak.
1984, Rafe De Crespigny, Northern Frontier: The Policies and Strategy of the Later Han Empire, Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University, →ISBN, page 1762 more examples
Indeed it should be added that recent research has shown that a few little known languages—Kettish, the extinct Kottish, and two or more—which were spoken on the upper Yenisei River in the immediate vicinity of Finno-Ugrian languages and were originally supposed to belong to that family, are in fact not related to it, or apparently any other language, and form a little family of their own.
1962, Gerard Clauson, “Turk, Mongol, Tungus”, in Asia Major, volume VIII, Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica., page 110On the other hand, as Ligeti (1950) was the first to point out, there is a good possibility that they may have spoken a language belonging to the Palaeo-Siberian family, the only surviving member of which is Kettish, also known as Yenissei-Ostyak.
1983, E[dwin] G[eorge] Pulleyblank, “The Hsiung-nu”, in David N. Keightley, editor, The Origins of Chinese Civilization, Germany: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 451Synonyms: Ket
Synonyms & antonyms
proper nounSynonym of Ket (“the Yeniseian language of the Ket people”).
Origin
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
Kettish. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Kettish
“Kettish.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Kettish. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Kettish,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Kettish.
Source: Kettish on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.