805: Adjectival -en Suffixes (-en Day 6) Feb 20, 2017

Simply because a suffix belongs to the broader category of "adjectival suffix" does not mean that all of those suffixes will function the same; though of course this is also the case with any type of suffix, not just for adjectival ones. The word, 'silken' therefore does not mean the same thing as, 'silky', the former referring to something made of silk, and the latter referring to reminiscence of the quality of silk, and might as well be 'silkesque' or 'silkish', which you can see more on here: the '-esque' suffix. There are a great many of these adjectival '-en' suffixes that are used to denote the idea of: "composed of", which sometimes appears as just an '-n' such as in 'silvern' or 'lethern'. Due to the relative importance of being able to differentiate between the meanings of, say, 'ashen' and 'ashy', 'woolen' and 'wooly', or 'earthen' and 'earthy', this Old English suffix is not used in just a few exceptional cases—like some of the other functions of this ending—but could probably be understood when applied to words that don't conventionally take this ending.