[Ads-l] Cowardous

Bwh031451 bwh031451 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Feb 5 20:59:15 UTC 2021


I submit that “cowardous” survives largely as a misspelling of “cowardice”.

Similarly, “populous” is often really a misspelling of “populace”.   (Although neither are obsolete.)

In either case, it is a spell-it-like-you-hear-it error.

Perhaps a closer parallel is “avarice”/“avarous”.

Brian Hitchcock
At Large
Email:  bwh031451 at gmail.com

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list