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sulfurous

/ˈsʌlfəɹəs/adjective

sulfurous is an adjective meaning “Containing sulfur” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-U-L-F-U-R-O-U-S, and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does sulfurous mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    USContaining sulfur.

  2. 2

    Of, or relating to sulfur, especially in its lower oxidation state.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce sulfurous?

  • US /ˈsʌlfəɹəs/
  • UK /sʌlˈfjuɹəs/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-sulfurous.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of sulfurous

  • more sulfurous comparative
  • most sulfurous superlative
  • sulphurous UK

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is sulfurous?

Sulfurous appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 117,098th 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).

Sulfurous in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchsulfureux (containing sulfur)
Portuguesesulfuroso (containing sulfur), sulfúreo, sulfúrico (of or relating to sulfur)
Spanishsulfuroso (containing sulfur)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does sulfurous come from?

From Latin sulphurōsus. By surface analysis, sulfur + -ous.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).