(reduced to -n after r in unstressed syllables), corresponds to OS. -in, OHG. -în (Ger. -en), ON. -in, Goth. -eina-:—OTeut. -īno-, = Gr. -ῑνο-, L. -īno- (see -INE), added to noun-stems to form adjs. with sense ‘pertaining to, of the nature of.’ In Teut. the adjs. so formed chiefly indicate the material of which a thing is composed. Of the many words of this formation which existed in OE. scarcely any survive in mod. use; but the suffix was extensively applied in ME. to form new derivatives. Some of these took the place of OE. words, from which they formally differ only by the absence of umlaut; compare OE. gylden with mod.Eng. golden, OE. stǽnen (early ME. stenen) with ME. and dial. stonen, made of stone. From 16th c. onwards there has been in literary English a growing tendency to discard these adjs. for the attrib. use of the sb., as in ‘a gold watch’; hence many of them have become wholly obs., and others (as golden, silvern) are seldom used except metaphorically, or with rhetorical emphasis. It is only in a few cases (e.g., wooden, woollen, earthen, wheaten) that these words are still familiarly used in their lit. sense. In s.w. dialects, however, the suffix is of common occurrence, being added without restriction to all sbs. denoting the material of which anything is composed, as in glassen, steelen, tinnen, papern, etc.
