ous
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
open dictionary
Access
Free
no sign-up needed
Detailed reference entry for the English word "ous", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "ous" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "ous" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
-ous is aEnglishsuffix. It means: Used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote: Pronounced /-əs/.
Compare similar words
See how -ous compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | -ous |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Suffix |
| IPA | /-əs/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for -ous is 4 letters long, classified as asuffix, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /-əs/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for -ous in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English -ous, from Old French -ous, -os, -us, from Latin -ōsus (“full of”). Doublet of -ose and -wise in unstressed position. Many English adjectives ending in -ous were taken from preexisting French or Latin adjectives that end in one of the ab… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is -ous, spelled --O-U-S, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote:
- 2Used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote:
- 3Used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote:
- 4Used in chemical nomenclature to name chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a lower oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ic. For example sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃). See Inorganic nomenclature.
Etymology
From Middle English -ous, from Old French -ous, -os, -us, from Latin -ōsus (“full of”). Doublet of -ose and -wise in unstressed position. Many English adjectives ending in -ous were taken from preexisting French or Latin adjectives that end in one of the above suffixes (e.g. envious corresponds directly to Old French envious which in turn corresponds directly to Latin invidiōsus). In addition, -ous (or the variant form -ious) has at times been attached to English nouns to form derived adjectives that lack precedents in French or Latin, such as slumberous from slumber or blizzardous from blizzard. It has also been used in some cases as a means of adapting adjectives borrowed from Latin that originally ended simply in -us, -a, -um (for example, obvious and previous are derived from Latin obvius and praevius, not *obviōsus or *praeviōsus).
This word in other languages
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "-ous"?
What does "-ous" mean?
How do you pronounce "-ous"?
What is the origin of the word "-ous"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter - in our English index: