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I have been spelling the word "curiosity" with a u, "curiousity," my whole life, and only today was Chrome's spellcheck bold enough to highlight my lifelong error. I have two questions:

  1. The root word is curious. How or why has the quality of being curious come to be spelled without its u? Or is it the word curious that is unique, and both words were derived from a word with no u, like curio?
  2. Since I have spelled the word this way my whole life and none of my English teachers/professors ever crossed out this "misspelling," is it not technically incorrect, just discouraged? Or perhaps it is archaic, which is why I could only find it defined in a legal dictionary with a capital "C:" Curiousity, not curiousity.
herisson
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David Schwartz
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    As far as English is concerned, the root of curiosity is curiosity. It was not formed from curious. The real question here is where the latter got its second u from. The French original did not have it. (Edit: and the answer to that, of course, is rather boring: by analogy with all the other -ous words. Dangerous, numerous, devious, perilous, dubious, serious, oblivious, murderous, hilarious, marvellous, what have you. It actually makes perfect sense for once.) – RegDwigнt Sep 18 '14 at 21:08
  • @RegDwigнt Put that in an answer and it'll probably become the accepted answer! I did notice that the English word curiosity comes from French, but not until after I posted the question. I am curious as to how Curiousity ended up in legal dictionaries, though. – David Schwartz Sep 18 '14 at 21:20
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    @Reg: Surely there must be more to it than that. What about monstrosity, religiosity, generosity, etc.? – FumbleFingers Sep 18 '14 at 21:26
  • @RegDwigнt Are you sure that’s really true? Curiosity may have been borrowed piecemeal, but -ity is a productive suffix, and if added to words ending in -ous, the final vowel of the derivational stem does regularly (and productively) change from /ʊ/ to /ɔ/. If I were to coin an abstract -ity noun from, say, dangerous or marvellous, it would end up as dangerosity and marvellosity, not dangerousity/marvellousity. So despite the fact that it’s a Latinate (or Old Frenchinate) suffix added to a Latinate root, the vowel change is productive and you can quite easily [cont’d -->] – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 18 '14 at 21:48
  • [--> cont’d] argue that the derivational stem is in fact curious in English (which would make curiosity a calque that just happens to be identical to the direct loan). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 18 '14 at 21:49
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    Also: generous and generosity. – jxh Sep 18 '14 at 22:02
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    And monstrous and monstrosity. – Barmar Sep 19 '14 at 20:14
  • But not ferocious and ferociosity. The latter is just ferocity. – Barmar Sep 19 '14 at 20:15
  • @Janus: sure, but if it were a calque that just happened to be identical to the direct loan, there'd be no way for us to know which of the two we'd be looking at at any given moment. More to the point, you are still merely agreeing that it makes perfect sense, as it's always -ous but always -osity. – RegDwigнt Sep 19 '14 at 21:27
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    @FumbleFingers same as at Janus, you are not contradicting anything I just said. Always a u if there's no -ity, always none otherwise. – RegDwigнt Sep 19 '14 at 21:28
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    @Reg I'm agreeing with that bit, but not (necessarily) that curiosity was not formed from curious and that the latter is not the root of the former. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 19 '14 at 23:02
  • @Reg, Janus: Both you guys know much more about these things than me, but checking OED I think I must disown the implications of my first comment. Apparently all my examples (and presumably most/all others, though I've not checked) have Old French or Latin root nouns with *-ros-. To which one can simply add the (still productive, as Janus says) suffix -ity*. (Chalk one up to Reg! :) – FumbleFingers Sep 20 '14 at 01:43

2 Answers2

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Interesting question! Here's what the OED has to say about -ious:

a compound suffix, consisting of the suffix -ous, added to an i which is part of another suffix, repr. Latin -iōsus, French -ieux, with sense ‘characterized by, full of’. ... by false analogy in cūriōsus curious (from cūra): see -ous suffix.

and, re: -ous:

Nouns of quality from adjectives in -ous (however derived), are regularly formed in -ousness , ... a considerable number of those from Latin -ōsus have forms in -osity , as curiosity ... see -osity suffix.

and, re: -osity:

The direct reflex of Latin -ōsitāt- in Old French was -ouseté , which is found in Middle English as -ouste , forming nouns from adjectives in -ous suffix... . Loanwords of this period having the latter termination and remaining in use were subsequently re-formed with -osity (e.g. contrariosity n., curiosity n.: compare also religiousty n., voluptuousty n. with religiosity n., voluptuosity n. (all first attested in late Middle English), and hidousty n. with the much later formation hideosity n.). ...

szarka
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The base (root) is "cure".

cur(e) + i + ous = curious

cur(e) + i + o(u)s + ity = curiosity

EXPLANATION --The "i" is explained above by szarka.
--The "e" is dropped as usual when adding the suffix that starts with a vowel. --The "u" is dropped in "curiosity" as part of another suffix spelling pattern (i.e., when adding the suffix "-ity" to a word ending with the suffix "-ous" drop the "u".) Another example of this pattern is "luminous"->"luminosity".

See: curious. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved August 08, 2015, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/curious

Sandie
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