A friend says there are four words in english ending in -dous. I can only think of three: stupendous, tremendous, and horrendous. I have a vague recollection of coming across this in a -gry thread but I can’t find it right now. So, I guess I have two questions.
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
Hazardous.
There are probably a bunch of less common ones, but I can’t think of any offhand.
“Hazardous,” but I’m sure that OED lists dozens of others, too. After all, they have about 100 “-gry” words.
Go to www.onelook.com and type, “*dous”, less the quotation marks, into the search string box and hit the search button. You’ll find at least another dozen.
Here’s mud in yer eye,
UncleBeer
Angrydous? ::ducking::
It’s interesting that the “one look” dictionary doesn’t come up with the three I mentioned. I hadn’t tried that on before, thanks for the link. I couldn’t get OED to work today, I’ll try tomorrow.
Anyone got an answer for my second question? Sorry if this is a lame thread but I’m brain fried today and I need to borrow a few neurons to get me through until I can get some time to sleep. Thanks.
This question is answered in Cecil’s first book, but the column is not yet online.
From memory: he provided all four common words, then had a bit along the lines of:
That was the sense of it, anyway…
This was followed by people sending in a kazillion -dous words.
What a shocker.
VileOrb, it doesn’t find those because the default search looks in the specialty, such as medical, legal & technical, dictionaries first. If you look near the center of the screen, you will find an option to search generic dictionaries, rather than the topical ones.
Ya seen one ‘duh’, ya seen all the ‘dous’.
Ray (leaving before becoming endostomatopodous)
AHA! I’m not dreaming I was just misremembering the location of the dicussion.
I am, however, still brain dead enough to have trouble using a search engine. ouch. Heineken and Goldschlager on an empty stomach. Thanks Unc.
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
From one of the world’s foremost verbivores:
http://pw1.netcom.com/~rlederer/gry.htm
“At least 32 additional -dous words repose in various dictionaries: apodous, antropodous, blizzardous, cogitabundous, decapodous, frondous, gastropodous, heteropodous, hybridous, iodous, isopodous, jeopardous, lagopodous, lignipodous, molybdous, mucidous, multifidous, nefandous, nodous, octapodous, palladous, paludous, pudendous, repandous, rhodous, sauropodous, staganopodous, tetrapodous, thamphipodous, tylopodous, vanadous and voudous.”
Thanks all for the loan of you grey matter. Perhaps I can return the favor some day.
I couldn’t remember any of this as a result of having avoided the -gry topics for a long time and not being in peak shape today.
Time to go home and sleep.
It’s actually from Cecil’s third book and it can be found online:
[url=http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_236.html]What are the four common English words ending in “-dous”?
[/quote]
Marge: Your father is… resting.
Bart: “Resting” hung over? “Resting” got fired? Help me out here.
Sheesh. Mr Smartypants Link Geek can’t get his URL straight.
What are the four common English words ending in “-dous”?
Well, here is the list I got which has every word up to 15 letters that is acceptable in Scrabble:
AMADOUS
APODOUS
DECAPODOUS
HAZARDOUS
HORRENDOUS
IODOUS
NODOUS
NONHAZARDOUS
PALLADOUS
STUPENDOUS
TREMENDOUS
ULTRAHAZARDOUS
VANADOUS
You’re welcome… 
Yer pal,
Satan
What? No semihazardous?
So, Satan, how about a list of words that end in…
flees in terror from hordes of angry SDMB-ers with rotten tomatoes