gushy comes from gush (Middle English guschen, gosshen, 'to gush, flow', probably of imitative origin or from Old Norse gusa) + the adjectival suffix -y. Morphologically, the ending is part of the etymology: the suffix is attached to the older base named in the history, producing a later English derivative. The etymology remains cautious where the history is cautious: comparisons, echoic formation, or disputed derivation do not make the ancestry more definite than the forms actually named. In present English, the adjective sense is "excessively sentimental or effusive", so the historical development ends in a clearly identifiable modern dictionary use. The same base also appears in related forms such as gush, gusher, and gushing, and in derivatives such as gushily and gushiness. Its semantic neighborhood includes effusive, sentimental, mawkish, and mushy, which helps locate the modern sense without adding a separate etymological claim.