Resembling or characteristic of bark, or inclined to bark (for dogs); rough-textured or woody in appearance.
From 'bark' plus the adjectival suffix '-y.' First appeared in English texts describing tree surfaces, later applied to dog behavior and rough textures generally.
The adjective 'barkey' is wonderfully ambiguous—it could describe a dog that barks often, a tree with rough bark, or even a cough that sounds like a seal's bark. This flexibility shows how suffix-based word creation lets English speakers build new meanings on the fly.
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