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-ous ending adjectives

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Alfonso
April 04, 2008, 01:26 PM
I'm opening a new thread with some information I gather from the old thread derechohabientes.

This one is about -ous ending adjectives in English.

David, I can't really understand this distinction:

Escrito originalemente por Tomisimo http://forums.tomisimo.org/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://forums.tomisimo.org/showthread.php?p=6480#post6480)
... if you use editor as a synonym of proofreader ...
... if editor is synonymous with proofreader ...

From the examples you gave, I can guess synonym is a noun meanwhile synonymous is an adjective, and that determines the different way of usage (can I say the different prepositional regime -I'm translating régimen preposicional-). Am I right?

Is there any other pair of words, one of them ending -ous, holding the same difference. I'm sorry I can't find a pair of words like those I'm imagining, but I think there must be.

Thanks a lot to you all for your help.

Tomisimo
April 04, 2008, 03:43 PM
Off the top of my head, here are a few more pairs:

villain - villainous
atrocity - atrocious
nausea - nauseous
jealousy - jealous
harmony - harmonious
fame - famous
riot - riotous
joy - joyous
hilarity - hilarious
ambition - ambitious
pomp - pompous
space - spacious

So, the thing is this. With synonym and synonymous there are two ways of saying the sentence in English, but only one way in Spanish.

x es sinónimo de y
x is a synonym of y
x is synonymous with y

Here's another example, and in this case, there are two ways of saying it in Spanish, but only one way in English.

celos - celoso
jealousy - jealous

Tiene celos :good:
Es celoso :good:
He has jealousy :bad:
He's jealous :good:

Hopefully I've helped explain it :)

Edit: I just re-read your post, and I guess you were asking if there are any other pairs (noun/adj) that behave the same way synonym and synonymous do. And my answer is, I can't think of any. For example antonym and homonym don't have an -ous adjective associated with them.