Origin and history of -y

noun suffix, in army, city, country, etc., Middle English -ie, from Anglo-French -ee, Old French -e, from Latin -atus, -atum, past participle suffix of certain verbs, which in French came to be used to indicate "employment, office, dignity" (as in duché, clergié).

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

*

Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain." (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.

diminutive suffix used in forming in pet proper names (Christy, Sandy, Jemmy), attested by c. 1400 in Scottish (as -ie). Perhaps it is a merging of the common adjective ending -y (2) with old fem. suffixes in -ie. It might have been reinforced by Dutch -je in similar use.

According to OED (1989) it became frequent in English 15c.-16c.

The use with common nouns, childish names of animals (Jenny wren), etc., also seems to have begun in Scottish (laddie is by 1540s) and become popular in English from late 18c. via Burns (timrous beastie). But the formation perhaps appears earlier in baby and puppy, and compare hobby in hobby-horse. Granny, dearie, and sweetie all are 17c. and early 18c.

In general use with names of girls (Kitty, Jenny), where it coincides with names such as Mary, Lucy, Lily, where it is not a diminutive. The extension to surnames seems to be from c. 1940.

a noun suffix in words from Latin and Greek indicating state, condition, or quality (jealousy, sympathy); also activity or the result of it (victory, history); via Anglo-French and Old French -é, from Latin -ia, Greek -ia, from PIE *-a-, suffix forming abstract or collective nouns.

It is etymologically identical with -ia and the second element in -cy, -ery, -logy, etc. Many of the words were abstract in sense before concrete meanings developed (e.g. embroidery).

The suffix also is sometimes used in modern words of classical formation (inquiry), and by analogy to make alternative forms (innocence/innocency) without signification but useful metrically for an extra syllable (like Spenser's y-).