-vorous

1. a combining form meaning “eating, gaining sustenance from” that specified by the initial element:

   carnivorous.

-vorous

combining form

1. feeding on or devouring

   carnivorous

Derived Forms

• -vore, combining_form:in_noun:countable

Word History and Origins

Origin of -vorous¹

< Latin -vorus devouring; -ous

Word History and Origins

Origin of -vorous¹

from Latin -vorus; related to vorāre to swallow up, devour

Example Sentences

Jeremy Vorous refused to let a probation officer inside his home, was repeatedly uncooperative with probation officials, had an illicit machete in his home, and was still allowed to retain his pretrial release.

From Slate

When young, Jeff would challenge himself to define a word, chasing it down through the dictionary: Fishwife to shrew to shrewmouse to insectivorous to vorous.

From Los Angeles Times

Legendary Montana guide Rusty Vorous once hypothesized that you could tail-tie a Missouri trout to any other trout in the West, and the Missouri trout would drag the other up the river until it drowned.

From Time Magazine Archive

Words having the following terminations are usually accented on the antepenult, or third syllable from the end: cracy, ferous, fluent, flous, honal, gony, grapher, graphy, loger, logist, logy, loquy, machy, mathy, meter, metry, nomy, nomy, parous, pathy, phony, scopy, strophe, tomy, trophy, vomous, vorous.

From Project Gutenberg