Buffoonish comes from buffoon (via French bouffon, from Italian buffone, 'jester', from buffa, 'jest, trick') + the adjectival suffix -ish. The historical trail runs through bouffon in Middle French and buffone in Italian. Morphologically, buffoonish is transparent: it draws on buffoon (via French bouffon, from Italian buffone, 'jester', from buffa, 'jest, trick') + the adjectival suffix -ish. Used as an adjective, buffoonish now means "ridiculously foolish or clownish in behavior", so the present definition can be read against the older forms and meanings. The same lexical family is also visible in derived forms such as buffoonishly and buffoonishness and related forms such as buffoon and buffoonery. The result is a borrowed or transmitted form whose modern spelling carries a compact record of its route into English.