Word.ws English Dictionary

-eous

UK/-ɪəs/US/-i.əs/

-eous suffix: used with nouns to form adjectives with the sense of resembling or having the characteristics of the suffixed term; similar to -ous.

Suffix (1)

-eous

  1. Used with nouns to form adjectives with the sense of resembling or having the characteristics of the suffixed term; similar to -ous.
    • righteous, mighteous, thefteous, lighteous, misteous, timeous, wrongeous

Suffix (2)

-eous

  1. Used to form adjectives meaning resembling or having characteristics of the related term.

Forms of -eous

alternative form-uous

Origin of -eous

From earlier -uous, alteration of -wose, -wos, a variant of -wise, from Middle English -wise, -wis, -wys, from Old English -wīs (“-wise”), under the influence of Etymology 2. More at -wise.

Chiefly from -ous with preceding vowel (compare -ious); compare also Latin -eus; but also by concatenation with English -te (an earlier form of -ty).

Questions about -eous

What does -eous mean?
-eous means used with nouns to form adjectives with the sense of resembling or having the characteristics of the suffixed term; similar to -ous.
What part of speech is -eous?
-eous is a suffix.
How do you pronounce -eous?
-eous is pronounced /-i.əs/ (US).

Words near -eous in the dictionary

  1. -ens
  2. -ensian
  3. -ent
  4. -entan
  5. -enyl
  6. -eous
  7. -ept
  8. -er
  9. -erel
  10. -erg-
  11. -ergic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -eous (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “-eous.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-eous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.