The incomparable William Z. Shetter writes about the increasing tendency to add "y" as a suffix to words to derive adjectives.
Without going through the fine-grained development that lexicologists find, suppose we just fast-forward to what we do today. Now as we look around, we find that there are practically no limits on what the suffix -y can be attached to, and the meaning has broadened into something like the more and more vague ‘reminds me of’ or ‘has a little in it of’.
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