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Origin and history of tenuious

tenuious(adj.)

"tenuous, attenuated, thin," late 15c., from Latin tenuis "thin" (see tenuous) + -ous.

also from late 15c.

Entries linking to tenuious

tenuous(adj.)

1590s, "thin, unsubstantial," irregularly formed with -ous + from Latin tenuis "slender, thin, fine; drawn out, meager, slim," figuratively "trifling, insignificant, poor, low in rank" (according to Watkins from PIE root *ten- "to stretch").

The correct form with respect to the Latin is tenuious. The figurative sense of "having slight importance, not substantial" is attested from 1817 in English. Related: Tenuously; tenuousness.

-ous

word-forming element making adjectives from nouns, meaning "having, full of, having to do with, doing, inclined to," from Old French -ous, -eux, from Latin -osus (compare -ose (1)). In chemistry, "having a lower valence than forms expressed in -ic."

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    Trends of tenuious

    adapted from books.google.com/ngrams/ with a 7-year moving average; ngrams are probably unreliable.

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