'The happenings' : Defining an arbitrary confidence interval for '-ish'

              An interesting event occurred in the internet history last month which led me to name the title. Anyway I am not going to talk about that in this ellevenish hour. Adding '-ish' to any thing is an interesting slang I got from my colleague. It is a word which provides confidence to the user and listener. But actually it is a usage which denotes uncertainty. Yeah, each time I use it, I am reminded of how uncertain and inaccurate I can with respect to what I am talking about. Now I just googled it.... See what I found in Dictionary.com

ish¹                                                              

1.

a suffix used to form adjectives from nouns, with the sense of “belonging to” ( British; Danish; English; Spanish); “after the manner of,” “having the characteristics of,” “like” ( babyish; girlish; mulish); “addicted to,” “inclined or tending to” ( bookish; freakish); “near or about” ( fiftyish; sevenish).

2.

a suffix used to form adjectives from other adjectives, with the sense of “somewhat,” “rather” ( oldish; reddish; sweetish).

 

              Now I think should add a confidence interval to the uncertainty provided by it. The limit of the security provided for the speaker should not be compromised by putting the interval too short. The same time the listener also should not feel like walking on water. Taking these factors into consideration I would put an arbitrary value of 83% acuity. A confidence level of 17% up or down.

             

              For example when I say I checked the blood pressure of the patient at fivish, the listener can assume I checked it some where between 17% of 24 hours up and down. That will be 4 hours up or below. 

             Well, this is open for discussion.