Definition of "donnish"

The proctor was a gentlemanly, straight-forward looking man of about thirty, not at all donnish, and his address answered to his appearance.

1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], chapter XII, in Tom Brown at Oxford: […], part 1st, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861

The truth is, unless a man can get the prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it’s hardly worth while for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and be able to spin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you’ll give him as a cue.

1876, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XVI, in Daniel Deronda, volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, book II (Meeting Streams), page 321