Word.ws English Dictionary

phosphorous

phosphorous adjective: of or pertaining to phosphorus. Also the misspelling of phosphorus.

Adjective

phosphorous (not comparable)

  1. Of or pertaining to phosphorus.
    Synonyms:
    phosphoric
  2. Resembling phosphorus.
    Synonyms:
    phosphoric
  3. Of, relating to, or containing trivalent phosphorus.

Also used as

phosphorous is also the misspelling of phosphorus.

Synonyms of phosphorous

Origin of phosphorous

From phosphorus + -ous.

Words formed from phosphorous

Questions about phosphorous

What does phosphorous mean?
Phosphorous means of or pertaining to phosphorus.
What part of speech is phosphorous?
Phosphorous is an adjective.

Words near phosphorous in the dictionary

  1. phosphorothiolated
  2. phosphorothiolates
  3. phosphorotrithioate
  4. phosphorotrithioates
  5. phosphorotrithioic acid
  6. phosphorous
  7. phosphorous acid
  8. phosphorroesslerite
  9. phosphorrösslerite
  10. phosphors
  11. phosphorthioate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phosphorous (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)-Flame, not lame-phosphorous.wav.

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