eş: all’incirca, approssimativamente, a un dipresso, circa, più o meno, pressappoco
köken: Inherited from Latin quasi. The final -i seems to hint towards the word being borrowed or semi-learned, but it's not uncommon for Italian to shift final -e to -i in invariable words (cf. avanti, dieci, tardi, etc.).
köken: Possibly from the same root as patior (“to suffer”); this may be Proto-Indo-European *peh₂-(i)- (“to hurt”) (this is supported by Pokorny), but its standard reconstruction as *peh₁-(i)- (or *peh₁y-) creates phonetic problems for the Latin. Neri (2007), following Vine, derives it Proto-Indo-European *p(e)-ai-ni- (“not entirely; from whom has been taken away; who takes away”), from *pe- (“away”) +…
köken: Inherited from Malay hampir, but inconclusive. * There is possibility that Malay hampir is a loanword from Dutch amper (“scarcely, barely”) as its high and almost universal usage in Flemish, in turn derived from Middle Dutch amper (“sour”), which had similar semantic development to German sehr (“very”) or Alemannic German rüüdig (“very”) and are cognates of Swedish amper and German Ampfer. *…