leprous
/ˈlɛpɹəs/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.90 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Having the appearance of the skin of one infected with leprosy; flaking, peeling, scabby, scurfy.
adj
Of gold or other metals: contaminated with other substances; impure.
Example Sentences
- "1748, Philip Luckombe, A Tour Through Ireland, London: T. Lowndes & Son, 1783, Journey the Fourth, p. 324, […] a dissenting minister […] came to this well, over-run with leprous eruptions on the skin, which had rendered his joints so rigid, that he could neither hold his bridle, nor feed himself […]"
- "Nor shall the art which you and I need be merely a purple robe woven by a slave and thrown over the whitened body of some leprous king to adorn or to conceal the sin of his luxury, but rather shall it be the noble and beautiful expression of a people’s noble and beautiful life."
- "‘If they die,’ he said, ‘the cell shall be their tomb. They were put there to die, and be lost. The cell is leprous. Do you understand?’"
- "And the Lord said furthermore unto him, Put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous as snow."
- "And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle; and, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow: and Aaron looked upon Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous."
- "And why, except that it had moved everywhere with them and they regarded it as one of their possessions, had they kept the hatrack, its glass now leprous, most of its hooks broken, its woodwork ugly with painting-over?"
Etymology
From Middle English leprous (“having leprosy or a skin disease with symptoms like leprosy; (alchemy) of metals or minerals: impure; a leper”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman leprous, lepros [and other forms], Middle French lepros, lepreux, and Old French leprous, lepros (“having leprosy; a leper”) (modern French lépreux), and from their etymon Late Latin leprosus (“having leprosy; (alchemy) of metals: impure; a leper”), from Latin lepra (“leprosy”) + -ōsus (suffix meaning ‘full of; overly; prone to’ forming adjectives from nouns). Lepra is derived from Ancient Greek λέπρᾱ (léprā, “leprosy”), from λεπῐ́ς (lepĭ́s, “flake, scale; epithelial debris”) (perhaps from λέπω (lépō, “to peel, strip off a husk or rind”) + -ῐς (-ĭs, suffix forming feminine nouns)) + -ᾱ (-ā, suffix forming action nouns from verbs).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈlɛpɹəs/
- British English: /ˈlɛpɹəs/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more leprous (comparative)
most leprous (superlative)