1443: -ic and -ous Nov 23, 2018

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The number of adjectival or nominal suffixes may sometimes feel gratuitous; in theory it would only be necessary to have one or two. However, unlike with ‘depth’ and the newer ‘deepness’, not all of these are so flexible or so random. For instance, ‘sulfurous’ and ‘sulfuric’ both mean, broadly speaking, ‘of sulfur’, yet these two are not totally interchangeable. In the names of chemicals, ‘-ic’ denotes a higher valence for the element; that is to say it denotes how easily it can combine with other particles. This is true of lots of other elements as well, where ‘-ous’ is used for both general use and for denoting lower valence, but ‘-ic’ is for a specific type.

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