caducous
/kəˈdjuːkəs/adjective
caducous is an adjective meaning “Of a part of an organism, disappearing in the normal course of development” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-A-D-U-C-O-U-S, and it appears about once in every 76 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does caducous mean?
adjective
- 1
Of a part of an organism, disappearing in the normal course of development.
- 2
Tending to fall early.
caducous leaves
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce caducous?
- /kəˈdjuːkəs/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of caducous
- more caducous comparative
- most caducous superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is caducous?
Caducous appears about once in every 76 million words in written English, the 275,970th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does caducous come from?
Latin cadūcus (“falling; transitory”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).