griffish

English edit

griffish (comparative more griffish, superlative most griffish)

(India, dated) Resembling or characteristic of a griff or griffin, a white person newly arrived in India from Europe.
- 1835, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, page 124:
  I might have taken refuge in the adjoining apartments; but I felt unwilling to appear griffish, as it is called, before the family.
- 1854, Henry Whitelock Torrens, James Hume, A selection from the writings, prose and poetical, of Henry W. Torrens, page 187:
  The first tiger I ever saw was under such circumstances, in my second year in India, with a friend as griffish to Indian sport as myself: we were two guns and a pad, his elephant wholly untried: […]