Origin and history of racy

[people of common descent] 1560s, "people descended from a common ancestor, class of persons allied by common ancestry," from French race, earlier razza "race, breed, lineage, family" (16c.), possibly from Italian razza, which is of unknown origin (cognate with Spanish raza, Portuguese raça). Etymologists say it has no connection with Latin radix "root," though they admit this might have influenced the "tribe, nation" sense, and race was a 15c. form of radix in Middle English (via Old French räiz, räis). Klein suggests the words derive from Arabic ra's "head, beginning, origin" (compare Hebrew rosh).

Original senses in English included "wines with characteristic flavor" (1520), "group of people with common occupation" (c. 1500), and "generation" (1540s). The meaning developed via the sense of "tribe, nation, or people regarded as of common stock" to "an ethnical stock, one of the great divisions of mankind having in common certain physical peculiarities" by 1774 (though as OED points out, even among anthropologists there never has been an accepted classification of these). In 19c. also "a group regarded as forming a distinctive ethnic stock" (German, Greeks, etc.).

Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine. [Dick Gregory, 1964]

In mid-20c. U.S. music catalogues, it means "Negro." Old English þeode meant both "race, folk, nation" and "language;" as a verb, geþeodan meant "to unite, to join." Race-consciousness "social consciousness," whether in reference to the human race or one of the larger ethnic divisions, is attested by 1873; race-relations is attested by 1897. Race theory "assertion that some racial groups are endowed with qualities deemed superior" is by 1894.

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

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Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain." (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.