In chemistry, a now antiquated naming system designated different oxidation states of metals using "-ous" for lower and "-ic" for higher. For example, ferrous (Fe2+) vs. ferric (Fe3+) and cuprous (Cu+) vs. cupric (Cu2+). The naming system is presumably French in origin because it uses Latin names for the elements and because "-ous" and "-ic" are typical French suffixes (suffices?).
A while ago I wondered whether such word pairs existed outside of chemistry and also whether they reflected degrees of whatever they were modifying. I put the question out there and got some feedback:
Sixty Grit said: harmonious vs. harmonic;
Pete tweeted: numerous and numeric;
Jason tweeted tonous and tonic;
Blake tweeted vampirous and vampiric.
"Tonous" and "vampiric" come up as questionable words. I added generous and generic, tyrannous and tyrannic, and barbarous and barbaric to the list.
Of these pairs, barbarous and barbaric come the closest to what I sought: barbaric sounds slightly more barbarous than barbarous does.
Can you add any word pairs? I will update this post with contributions.
Michael Haz adds sonorous and sonoric; calorous is failing my dictionary.
rhhardin adds autonomous and autonomic.
Brill adds coprophagous and coprophagic
Deborah adds amorphous and amorphic
26 comments:
Tumorous v. turmeric.
No?
Dang!
Sonorous and sonoric
Funky loud and funkeric.
Calorous and caloric
Callous and cow-lick.
Headwords in websters II
$ cat temp.sh
words.sh | egrep 'ic$|ous$'|awk '/ic$/ {
baseic[substr($1,1,length($1)-2)]++;
next;
}
/ous$/ {
baseous[substr($1,1,length($1)-3)]++;
next;
}
END {
for(i in baseous) {
if(!baseic[i])continue;
printf("%sic %sous\n",i,i);
}
}'
$ temp.sh
stannic stannous
numeric numerous
barbaric barbarous
sulfuric sulfurous
cupric cuprous
nitric nitrous
ferric ferrous
generic generous
autonomic autonomous
Thanks rhhardin. I'm excluding all chemical examples.
Coprophagous v. Coprophagic
Coprophagous v. Coprophagic
Bashirous and Bashiric!
amorphous amorphic
deborah said...
amorphous amorphic
The difference between those two is nuance.
Isn't the difference between barbaric and barbarous likewise nuance?
Amorphic sounds like a technical description, whereas amorphous is more of a liberal-arts term as shapeless as its literal meaning.
Bashirous und Bashiric! LOL
Scatologos und Scatologic
...and he ain't no Joyce.
From a Movie.
Sopor Soporific
Sophomore, Sophomoric
@Lem: Mind the suffix rules!
Got it.
Suffics, suffous.
STFUpicous.
Althouseous
Althouseric
"That was a very althouseous remark."
"Yes, it was said in an althouseric manner."
righteous and left us
(no)
righteous and brothers
(no)
righteous and "suck on this, you right wing racists!"
Yes!
ricpous and ricpic
Corpulous and Christieric
phallus - phallic
What? Is it just me?
coitus v cunnilingus
Why choose?
ndspinelli said...
coitus v cunnilingus
You're making things hard for yourselves.
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