|
|
June 2009Just Foolin' AroundOf the 470,000 entries in the Unabridged, only 536 end with the letters i-o-u-s. Do we owe the shaky economy for bringing four of those "IOUs" onto last month's Top Twenty List? Certainly not: those words (facetious, pretentious, egregious, and tenacious) are perennial look-up favorites. But what's with the i-o-u-s words? The majority of the 536 -ious entries are adjectives. That's because -ious is an adjective suffix, a Middle English form derived partly from Old French and partly from Latin. Of the 100 or so entries that are not adjectives, the majority appear in noun phrases (such as pernicious anemia) and a few also double as adverbs (precious, previous). One entry has a pronoun function. Which word is that? Find out yourself. Choose either the Unabridged or the Collegiate as a reference, then click on Advanced Search. Type *ious in the Main Entry field and pronoun in the Function field, and click Search for the word. |