The Suffix ～っぽい
Among the many ways to express likeness, the adjectival suffix ～っぽい presents itself as the up-and-coming modal auxiliary in Japanese, exhibiting as we shall see a major expansion in utility in the 2000s.
Presumably deriving from the adjective 多い but with its first use being dated back to the Edo Period, in its broadest understanding, it has two primary functions, both of which are normally translated into English as “-ish” or “-like”:
i. Indicating that something seems to contain a lot of something else, or in other words a strong affinity for said quality – though in context, whether the item in question has a lot of said thing is up to interpretation.
ii. Following the 連用形 of adjectives or verbs, it may indicate that something has a strong tendency to be or act a certain way.
Below are two sentences taken from 夏目漱石’s work 『吾輩は猫である』which was published in 1906, both being great examples of how the ending has traditionally been understood up until the present day.
1. あなたはほんとに厭（あ）きっぽい。(Usage ii)
You really are fickle.
2. この男がどういう訳か、よく主人の所へ遊びに来る。来ると自分を恋（おも）っている女が有りそうな、無さそうな、世の中が面白そうな、つまらなそうな、凄いような艶（つや）っぽいような文句ばかり並べては帰る。(Usage i)
For whatever reason, this man often comes to our place to chat with my master. Whenever he does, he babbles on, with a dreadful sort of coquettishness, about there being a woman in love with him or what not; about how much he enjoys the world or how desperately he is tired of it; then, he leaves.
The verb 飽きる, alternatively written as 厭きる in Ex. 1, means “to get tired of/lose interest,” and when used with ～っぽい, it creates the adjective 飽きっぽい meaning “to be fickle.” In Ex. 2, we see 艶っぽい meaning “to be coquettish,” which is a combination of the noun 艶 meaning “luster/(sexual) appeal” and ～っぽい.
Possible affinities/tendencies portrayed may pertain to physical appearance, outlook, aspect, mentality, physiology, mood, or may even be figurative. The more abstract the affinity/tendency, however, the more likely ～っぽい gives off an “-ish”-like interpretation – which is not necessarily negative – as opposed to being strongly indicative of or heavily containing something. This unique nuancing can be defined as Usage iii as follows:
iii. To give off the impression of something somehow or another. Whether that impression is positive or negative will depend on how that vague affinity is presented.
3. 卵白が水っぽくても味には問題がないことはお分かり頂けたかと思います。(Usage i)
I believe I’ve gotten you to understand that there is no problem as far as taste is concerned with egg whites even if they are watery.
4. 自分のどんなところがアホっぽいのかは分からないが、とりあえず、話し方には気を遣うようにします。 (Usage ii)
I don’t know exactly what it is about me that seems so idiotic, but for now, I’ll try to pay attention to how I’m talking.
5. なーんとなくフランス語っぽい言語なんだが、時々英語が混ざるようだ。
(Usage iii)
Though the language does have a French-like ring to it, somehow or another, it seems that English gets mixed into it from time to time.
As indicative by these examples, the use of ～っぽい is often negative, and the commentary itself is spot on albeit highly subjective1.
Noun + ～っぽい
The adjectival suffix ～っぽい may follow any noun, including proper nouns, pronouns, and even the 準体助詞 use of の.
6. 全然英語っぽくない響きだね。
It doesn’t have an English-like ring to it at all, huh.
7. まだ許容範囲っぽい。
It’s still in the acceptable-ish zone.
8. 体温計を見て熱っぽいのは気のせいだとは考えないでください。
Do not look at your thermometer and think your feverish state is just your imagination.
9. これは想定外の機能っぽいね。
This looks a feature that sorta seems unanticipated.
10. 畳のある部屋は本当に日本（っ）2ぽい雰囲気を出すね。
Rooms with tatami mats really give off a Japanese-like ambiance, huh.
11. そういうのっぽいよね。
It’s sorta like that line of thing, huh.
12. ちょっと茶色っぽい炒飯みたいなイメージがあるよね。
It has this image of being somewhat brownish-looking fried rice, huh.
13. 女子の気持ちもわかる女っぽい男性は、意外とモテます！
Men who are womanly in the sense they also know how women feel are surprisingly popular.
14. あたしっぽいスキン3きたぁ！
Finally, a skin that yells “me”!
15. 私は昔から日本茶を飲むと塩っぽい4味を感じます。
Since way back when, I taste this salty-like flavor whenever I drink Japanese tea.
16. 生地が粉っぽい。
The dough is powdery.
Because ～っぽい is an adjectival ending, that means it may also be rendered in its 連用形 to function adverbially.
17. 最近色っぽくなったな。
You’ve gotten sexier as of late.
18. お金持ちっぽく見えるでしょう？
I look like a rich person, right?
Adjective/Adjective Noun Stem
＋ ～っぽい
Although the adjectival suffix ～っぽい both evidently derives from an adjective and is observed being used with a handful of adjectives first, compared to its utility with nouns or even verbs, there are far fewer examples5 of it attaching to adjectives or adjectival nouns.
Most examples pertain to attitude descriptions, which inherently accompany actions that go along with them – bad tendencies. For instance, with 荒っぽい (violent/rough-mannered), the description is rendered adjectivally, but it is also understood that the person in question is conducting themselves violently.
Meanwhile, there are examples like 安っぽい (cheap-looking/tawdry), which although do not inherently refer to conduct, the description is so overly negative in connotation, that it is more appropriate to define these examples as pertaining to particularly bad tendencies and/or affinities.
19. あいつは表面だけ素直っぽい振りをしている。
That guy feigns to be sincere purely on the surface.
20. 悪っぽい人だけどあなたがすきだったわ。
You gave off bad-boy vibes, but I liked you.
21. 幼っぽい見た目とは裏腹に中身はすごくきちんとした大人で、頭の回転も速いと思いました。
I thought that, completely contrary to her childish looks, inside I saw a proper adult who was also quick-witted.
22. ｛遠慮っぽい・遠慮がちな ◎｝人は、逆に日本人と付き合ったほうが、うまくいくと思います。
I think people prone to being reserved would conversely be better off dating a Japanese person.
23. わたしって、愚痴っぽい人間かも！？
I might actually be a petulant person?!
24. 常日頃から皮肉っぽい人に向かって皮肉を言うのは危険ですか？
Is it dangerous to say something sarcastic to someone who’s always sarcastic?
25. 人間というのは俗っぽいんです。
That’s because people are vulgar.
26. たしかに学生時代には不良っぽい男子がモテていたし、社会人になってもちょっとワルっぽくてカッコいい大人はいますよね。
Boys who had that delinquent-like vibe were definitely popular back when I was a student, but even now as a full-fledged memory of society, there are adults out there who are baddish and cool, you know.
27. 父は少し頑固っぽい所がありますが記憶に残る限り、あれが嫌だったとかは無いです。
My dad had a little stubborn streak to him, but as far as I can remember, that wasn’t anything that I hated.
28. 英語の句動詞を使いこなすとネイティブっぽく話せる！
If you use master phrasal verbs in English, you’ll be able to talk like a native!
As the stems of color adjectives may also be viewed as nouns, those combinations tend to be viewed as harmless “Noun + ～っぽい,” which is corroborated by the lack of inherent negativity in such examples.
29. 犯人は黒っぽい帽子を被っていた。
The criminal wore a blackish cap.
30. 赤いとまではいきませんが、赤っぽい痰が出るようになりました。
I wouldn’t go so far as to label the phlegm that’s started to come out as red, but it is reddish.
Verb 連用形 ＋～っぽい
While ～っぽい does usually indicate strong tendency when attached to the 連用形 of verbs, if the verb itself is instantaneous in nature, then the resulting compound instead pertains to the effect having happened in a very pertinent way. To visualize this, compare the following:
31. （うちの）五歳女児がとても怒りっぽいです。
My five-year-old girl is really prone to losing her temper.
32. そのまま湿っぽい服を着ることで体温が下がり、体温が下がることで免疫力が低下し、風邪をひきやすくなります。
If you wear clothes while they’re still damp, your immunity will drop from your body temperature dropping, and it’ll make it easier for you to catch a cold.
While 怒りっぽい means “to be easily angered,” 湿っぽい means “to be damp.” For something to be “damp,” the thing in question must contain a lot of moisture.
33. 惚れっぽい性格とは、相手を深く知らずとも異性を好きになることを指します。
Having the disposition of easily being smitten is when you end up liking someone of the opposite sex without even knowing the other person at a deep level.
34. 咽せっぽい感じがします。
It feels like I’m choking.
35. あの子ってそんなに弄（いじ）られっぽいだろうか？
Is that kid that prone to getting teased?
～っぽい ‘s Expanding Usage
At the beginning, from the Edo Period to the Meiji Period, ～っぽい’s usage was largely limited to Usage i, with certain combinations such as 哀れっぽい bringing on Usage ii, which is often paraphrased in Japanese as いかにも・・・な状態.
36. 哀れっぽい声を出したって駄目だよ。
There’s no point in whining6.
Then, from the Meiji Period to the Taishо̄ Period, the seemingly opposite definition of having a certain liking but not actually being said thing (Usage iii) developed. This is also when it began to be used with demonstratives like in それっぽい as well as other kinds of nominal(ized) expressions.
Through its expanded role with nominal expressions of all kinds, it quickly gained yet another meaning, which is to define its expansion for future generations.
iv: A modality auxiliary which indicates that something seems to be the case, much in the same way ～らしい does but in a very casual tone.
37. どうやら明日は雨っぽい。
I guess it seems it gonna rain tomorrow.
Here, we see that although ～っぽい is after a noun, the noun is being used to describe rainfall and not the physical entity of rain. Yet, more so than ～らしい, the visual aspect feels far more relevant yet ironically less concrete. One can imagine the speaker hearing about it going to rain tomorrow, looking up at the sky, and thinking, “hm, I guess so,” and possibly even perplexed about it.
38. 駄目っぽいな、こりゃ。
This don’t seem good, huh.
39. 犯人（っ）ぽいやつを追跡して自宅を特定して現行逮捕してやるわ。
I’ll guy who looks like the criminal and figure out where (his) house is and arrest (him) on the spot!
Usage iv is not restricted to nouns. As seen in Ex. 38, it may even be used with adjectival nouns. Note that in either case, ～っぽい does not take the copula.
ADJECTIVE/Verb 終止形 ＋ ～っぽい
Perhaps the most important utilization of Usage iv is its ability to follow adjectives and verbs in the 終止形. This was first observed in 2000, and since then it has steadily gained acceptance with an acceptance rate of about 40% as of the 2010s. What is so intriguing about this adaptation is how the various implications that ～っぽい has as a suffix add nuancing to ～っぽい as a modal auxiliary that established endings such as ～らしい・ようだ do not have.
■”Seem” w/ Negative-ish Implication
40. なにか知ってたっぽい。
It seems like (he/she) did know something.
41. チャット機能もなく、交流方法は掲示板に書き込むくらいしかないっぽい。
It doesn’t even have a chat function, and its means for interacting (with others) seems like it’s just posting onto a message board.
■”Seem” w/ Indifferent-ish Implication
42. こういうちゃんとしてるっぽい蕎麦とかうどんとかが売っているのはさすがにっていうかこれだってちゃんとした十割蕎麦だからね。
Leave it to this place to be selling legitimate-looking soba and udon like this, but I mean, this right here really is proper soba that’s 100% buckwheat flower.
The “-ish” factor combined with the syntactic function of establishing supposition leads to an array of possible emotional states the speaker could be getting at, but the extent at to which ～っぽい may be used.
It is also possible to see ～っぽい affixed after a quote in the same manner as ～というような, but with a vaguer and more casual tone, possibly also clueing the listener in on how the speaker might be thinking about the situation.
43. 負けたら終わりじゃなくてやめたら終わりなんだよねっぽい歌詞がある。
The song has lyrics that go like “it’s not over if you look; it’s over when you quit.”
～っぽい in Isolation = X～っぽい
It is even possible for ～っぽい to stand alone in isolation. In this scenario, the reference point is understood in context and left unstated. How ～っぽい is interpreted is context-dependent with any of its four usages possible depending on what the perceived dropped entity, which we shall call X, is.
44. しかも、っぽくない？
Moreover, doesn’t it seem like it?
45.「え、男同士がホームでいちゃついてたってこと？」「っぽいね」
“What? So, two guys were making out with each other on the platform?” “Seems like it, yeah.”
参照
日本国語大辞典
現代語における 接尾辞「ぽい」の用法 by 久保有佐.
接尾辞「ぽい」の用法の拡大について by 中村真子.
- The subjective nature behind ～っぽい is borne of its emotional tone and its implications, but it could also be viewed as being quasi-objective in the sense that the commentary is meant to be hard to deny. ↩︎
- Gemination of a stop consonant after /N/ is rarely heard in natural speech, and to reflect this, っ is often not written, but because of the lexicalized nature of ～っぽい itself, it is not uncommon for it to be written anyway. ↩︎
- “Skin” as in graphical customization. ↩︎
- The difference between using 塩っぽい here as opposed to 塩っぱい is quite significant. The speaker is implying that their tasting of saltiness is abnormal or even a misconception, and so the use of ～っぽい makes it clear that the flavor profile at hand is “as if it were salty” as opposed to truly having a high salt content. ↩︎
- Examples of ～っぽい attaching itself to adjectives/adjectival nouns are far fewer in number than with nouns, and such examples are often lexicalized to the point that they are listed in dictionaries, which may give off the impression that they are more numerous than with nouns due to said reference bias. ↩︎
- 哀れっぽい may be more literally translated as “piteous/doleful.” ↩︎