Word.ws English Dictionary

-iour

-iour suffix: suffix added to verbs to form nouns. Also the alternative form of -our.

Suffix

-iour

  1. (idiomatic) Suffix added to verbs to form nouns.
    • behaviour, saviour

Also used as

-iour is also the alternative form of -our.

Forms of -iour

alternative form-ior

Origin of -iour

An alteration of -our, arising in the 15th and 16th centuries through analogy with words such as saviour (Middle English saveour, savour) and paviour (Middle English paver, pavier) which varied between forms with an intervening -e- or -i- and those without due to differing adaptions of their Old French sources (sauveor and paveor, *pavier respectively).

Questions about -iour

What does -iour mean?
-iour means suffix added to verbs to form nouns.
What part of speech is -iour?
-iour is a suffix.

Words near -iour in the dictionary

  1. -ioid
  2. -ion
  3. -ions
  4. -ior
  5. -iot
  6. -iour
  7. -ious
  8. -irudin
  9. -isation
  10. -isations
  11. -ise

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -iour (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: “-iour.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-iour. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.