##5, 6
---I thought it worth copying the entire entry (minus specimen sentences under sense 2) for the suffix "-ling" from the OED; new to me, too:
1. In Old English, -ling added to nouns forms nouns with the general sense ‘a person or thing belonging to or concerned with (what is denoted by the primary noun), as hýrling hireling, ierðling ploughman ( < ierð ploughing), rǽpling prisoner ( < ráp rope). The derivatives from adjectives have the sense ‘a person or thing that has the quality denoted by the adjective’, e.g. déorling darling, efenling an equal, feorðling quarter, farthing, geongling youngling, gesibling, sibling kinsman; similarly from an adverb, underling subordinate. One or two names of birds have this suffix in Old English, as swertling ? some black bird (? < sweart black), stærling starling; here it may possibly have a diminutive force (see 2 below).
In Middle English and modern English the suffix continued to be freely employed with the same function as in Old English; examples are atterling, deathling, fatling, firstling, grayling, nestling, nursling, sapling, suckling. The personal designations in -ling are now always used in a contemptuous or unfavourable sense (though this implication was not fully established before the 17th cent.), as courtling, earthling, groundling, †popeling (= papist), vainling, worldling. On the analogy of words like nursling, where the grammatical character of the initial element is ambiguous, a few nouns in -ling have been formed on verb-stems (taken in passive sense), being personal designations of contemptuous import, such as shaveling, starveling; of similar origin is stripling, though it has lost its primary derisive sense.
The suffix is no longer productive in the uses above explained.
2. In Old Norse the suffix had a diminutive force, of which there are only slight traces in the other Germanic languages (cf. Old English stærling mentioned above, and German sperling sparrow); chiefly in words denoting the young of animals, as gǽsling-r gosling, ketling-r kitten, kiðlin-gr young kid, †‘kidling’, but also in a few other words, as bœ́kling-r booklet, vetling-r glove, yrmling-r little worm. In English the earliest certain instance of this use appears to be codling, recorded c1314 (kitling, which appears a1300, being of dubious formation), in the 15th cent. we find gosling (of which the earliest quoted form, gesling, points to adoption from Old Norse), and duckling. In the 16th cent. and subsequently the suffix has been employed in many new diminutive formations, chiefly contemptuous appellations of persons, as godling, lordling, kingling, princeling; in this use it is still a living formative.
In the formation of diminutives expressing merely smallness of size, -ling has never been extensively used; a few writers of the 19th cent. have so employed it in nonce-words.
[OED]
