-hoodsuffix

Originally a distinct noun, meaning ‘person, personality, sex, condition, quality, rank’ (see had n.), which being freely combined with nouns, as in Old English cild-hád child-condition, mægð-hád virgin state, pápan hád papal dignity, ceased at length to be used as a separate word, and survived as a mere suffix, and is thus noteworthy as a late example of the process by which suffixes arose. The Middle English form was regularly -hôd with open ô, as still in Chaucer; but in the 15th cent. it had become close ō (rhyming in Bokenham's Seyntys with gōd ‘good’), and this duly gave modern English hood. A parallel suffix, from same root and in same sense, is -head suffix, Middle English -hed, -hede, Sc. -heid. A considerable number of derivatives in -hood go back to Old English -hád, e.g. bishophood, childhood, priesthood; many are of later origin, either with -hood substituted for the cognate -hede, -head, e.g. falsehood, lustihood, or as analogical formations, in some of which -hood has displaced earlier suffixes. Being a living suffix, -hood can be affixed at will to almost any word denoting a person or concrete thing, and to many adjectives, to express condition or state, so that the number of these derivatives is indefinite. Nonce-formations are numerous: