missyish dress
- noun
:
vestido juvenil
- The store specializes in missyish dresses with bright colors and playful patterns.
Examples
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Some people find a missyish dress too childish for formal occasions.
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She wore a missyish dress to the party, making her look years younger.
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She wore a missyish dress to the party.
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The missyish dress was perfect for the summer festival.
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The store specializes in missyish dresses with bright colors and playful patterns.
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Some people find a missyish dress too childish for formal occasions.
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She wore a missyish dress to the party, making her look years younger.
Synonyms
A dress with soft decorative details like ruffles or ribbons that shows a feminine style
How Youthful
- Informal
Surface Forms
Morphology
missyish + dress
Although 'missyish' is nonstandard and not listed in dictionaries, its structure is transparently derivable as 'missy' + the productive suffix '-ish' meaning 'like' or 'somewhat'. A learner who knows 'missy' (young girl) and 'dress' can therefore infer 'a dress that looks/feels like something a young girl would wear' — a youthful, playful, slightly childlike style.
Etymology
Missyish dress comes from the word missy, which means 'young girl', and the ending -ish, which means 'like'. One popular idea is that these dresses look like clothes a 'missy' would wear, bright and playful, so the phrase now means a dress that looks 'youthful' or 'childlike'.
