donnish

don +‎ -ish

donnish (comparative more donnish, superlative most donnish)

1. Characteristic of a (university) don.
   • 1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], chapter XII, in Tom Brown at Oxford: […], part 1st, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861, →OCLC:

     The proctor was a gentlemanly, straight-forward looking man of about thirty, not at all donnish, and his address answered to his appearance.

   • 1876, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XVI, in Daniel Deronda, volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book II (Meeting Streams), page 321:

     The truth is, unless a man can get the prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it’s hardly worth while for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and be able to spin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you’ll give him as a cue.

2. (of a person) Bookish, theoretical and pedantic, as opposed to practical.

   The new engineer had a donnish air, and found it difficult to communicate with the workers in the factory.

• donnishness