Word.ws English Dictionary

envyous

envyous is the obsolete spelling of envious.

Meaning of envious

Adjective

envious (comparative more envious, superlative most envious)

  1. Feeling or exhibiting envy; jealously desiring the excellence or good fortune of another; maliciously grudging.
    • an envious man, disposition, or attack; envious tongues
  2. Excessively careful; cautious.
    • for no man was ever so amorous, as to love a toad; none so envious, as to repine at the condition of the miserable1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Francis Ashe […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    overcautious
  3. (obsolete) Malignant; mischievous; spiteful.
    • Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch.1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC
  4. (obsolete, poetic) Inspiring envy.
    • He to him leapt, and that same envious gage / Of victors glory from him snatcht away.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 39

Forms of envyous

comparativemore envyous
superlativemost envyous

Questions about envyous

What is envyous the obsolete spelling of?
Envyous is the obsolete spelling of envious.

Words near envyous in the dictionary

  1. envyful
  2. envying
  3. envyingly
  4. envyings
  5. envyless
  6. envyous
  7. envyscroll
  8. envyscrolling
  9. envysome
  10. enwall
  11. enwalled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: envyous (page history and authors); envious (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:

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