Jewish

[joo-ish]

adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the Jews or Judaism.

   Jewish customs.

2. Informal.,  Yiddish.

noun

1. Informal.,  Yiddish.

Jewish

/ ˈdʒuːɪʃ /

adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of Jews

noun

1. a less common word for Yiddish

Other Word Forms

• Jewishly adverb
• anti-Jewish adjective
• half-Jewish adjective
• non-Jewish adjective
• pre-Jewish adjective
• pro-Jewish adjective
• Jewishness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of Jewish¹

1540–50; Jew + -ish ¹; compare Old English iudēisc < Late Latin iudē ( us ) Jew + Old English -isc -ish ¹

Example Sentences

She never told her sons that they were Jewish.

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He later learned from relatives that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish, and that they had died in Nazi concentration camps.

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Stoppard was not fully aware of his Jewish heritage until the 1990s, when a Czech relative told him all four of his grandparents and three aunts had been killed in Nazi concentration camps.

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Under a ruling established at the time of Israel's creation in 1948, men who devote themselves full-time to studying sacred Jewish texts are given a de facto pass from mandatory military service.

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Raanan, a collector of Jewish artefacts, said he fell in love with the book before even seeing it, when an antiques dealer told him about its existence.

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