carious
Syllables: ca·ri·ous/ˈkɛəɹi.əs/US/ˈkɛəi.əs/
carious adjective: having caries (bone or tooth decay); decayed, rotten.
Adjective
carious (comparative more carious, superlative most carious)
- Having caries (bone or tooth decay); decayed, rotten.
- [I]f no Acid be contain’d in the Blood how comes it, I beſeech you, that in Carious or Virulent Ulcers, the Silver Probe becomes inſtantly of a Livid Colour, which can only be effected by an Acid not an Alkalous Menſtruum?1700, Charles Leigh, “Of Distempers”, in The Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Peak, in Derbyshire: With an Account of the British, Phœnician, Armenian, Gr[eek] and Rom[an] Antiquities...
- Our disease is democracy. It is not the skin that festers—our very bones are carious, and their marrow blackens with gangrene. Which rogues shall be first, is of no moment—our republicanism must die, and I am sorry for it.1806 March 10, Fisher Ames, “To the Same [letter to Thomas Pickering]”, in Works of Fisher Ames. Compiled by a Number of His Friends. To which are Prefixed, Notices of His Life and Character, Boston...
Examples of carious in a sentence
- My father’s museum contained several preparations of carious teeth.1840, William Percivall, “Carious Teeth”, in Hippopathology: A Systematic Treatise on the Disorders and Lamenesses of the Horse; with their...
- Many chinchillas suffer from carious-like changes of the cheek teeth and odontoclastic resorptions close to the gingiva[…].2015, Estella Böhmer, “Changes of the Cheek Teeth”, in Dentistry in Rabbits and Rodents, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN...
Forms of carious
| comparative | more carious |
|---|---|
| superlative | most carious |
Origin of carious
From French carieux (“carious”), from carie (“decay (of bone or teeth)”) (from Latin cariēs (“rot, rottenness, corruption”), from careō (“to lack, be deprived of”), from Proto-Italic *kazēō (“to lack”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *ḱes- (“to cut”).) + French -eux (“-ous”) (from Latin -ōsus (“full of, prone to”), from Old Latin -ōsos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-went-, *-wont- + *-to-)).
Words formed from carious
Words that rhyme with carious
- cibarious
- scarious
- Stradivarius
- tartareous
- vagarious
- vicarious
- Aquarius
- atrabilarious
- calcareous
- contrarious
- hilarious
- lampadarius
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- librarius
- malarious
- multifarious
- omnifarious
- precarious
- riparious
- testudinarious
- various
- acinarious
- adversarious
- anticarious
- apocrisarius
- apocrisiarius
- arbitrarious
- arenarious
- argillocalcareous
- armarius
- assarius
- atramentarious
- Belisarius
- bordarius
- burglarious
- caeremoniarius
- calcarious
- confessarius
- corneo-calcareous
- cotarius
- duplicarius
- filarious
- fimetarious
- frumentarious
- glareous
- howlarious
- lapidarious
- librarious
- multivarious
- nectareous
- nectarious
- nefarious
- nightmarious
- noncalcareous
- noncarious
- nongregarious
- nonmalarious
- nonvicarious
- octarius
- octofarious
- octonarius
Questions about carious
- What does carious mean?
- Carious means having caries (bone or tooth decay); decayed, rotten.
- How do you use carious in a sentence?
- My father’s museum contained several preparations of carious teeth.
- What part of speech is carious?
- Carious is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce carious?
- Carious is pronounced /ˈkɛəɹi.əs/ (UK).
Words near carious in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: carious (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-carious.wav.
Cite this entry: “carious.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carious. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.