Douse a Dose
Solution
The four common English words that end in -dous are:
-
hazardous
-
horrendous
-
stupendous
-
tremendous
Computers have certainly destroyed the fun of some puzzles.
A puzzle like this would ordinarily have kept me going for
a week, but now all you have to do is type
grep .dous /usr/dict/words
and, if you believe the people who compiled the word list,
you're done.
This puzzle recently showed up in GAMES magazine. The author
stumbled across a few other words that might qualify as answers,
except that they aren't very common:
-
amadous, the plural of amadou, which is an astringent
made from one of several fungi;
-
-podous, a suffix meaning "footed", which occurs in such
exotic words as apodous, (no-footed), isopodous
and so on.
-
Reference:
-
Carl Held,
The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves:
Post Orange Rhyme Ravings,
Games Magazine,
March 2001.
Last revised on 23 March 2001.