sulfurous

Pronounced: SULL-fur-us (alt: sull-FYOOR-us), adj

Notes: Also spelled “sulphurous” – there are multiple definitions: how many do you know?

---

Yesterday’s word

The word haplology is “the contraction of a word by omission of one or more similar sounds or syllables”

First usage

Our word came into English in the late 1800s

Background / Comments

An example may be useful — a common haplology is saying “prolly” instead of “probably”. While that example is incorrect (at least at the present time), there are other instances of haplology that explain current word: we currently use the word “ably” for someone who does something well, but it started at “ablely” and, due to haplology it was shorted. There are many occurrences of this: What we call today “England” began as “Engla land” (land of the Englas), which, through haplology became “England”. Our word is considered to have been coined by the American philologist Maurice Bloomfield by combining the Greek words haplóos (simple; single) and lógos (speech; expression; idea).