calvous
/ˈkælvəs/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Hubert had given me his passport, in great excitement. [...] Admittedly most old, bloated, calvous Germans could double for me, and even if he hadn't been doppelganger material, with the beard I had started growing and the two black eyes, you'd need x-rays to spot the difference."
- "LXII. MORYSIA. Cass. / Achenium calvous, terete, furrowed, wingless. [...] Glabrous shrubs, with scattered oblong, dentate, or entire leaves, and corymbose yellow flowers: closely related to Athanasia, from which they differ in the calvous achenia."
- "In almost every family enumerated, the per centage is in favour of naked or wingless seeds, remarkably so in Dipsaceæ, where 11 per cent. of species with calvous seeds are widely dispersed, while only 3 per cent. of those furnished with pappus enjoy as wide a range. Among the Compositæ the proportions are as 4·5 to 2·9 per cent. in favour of calvous seeds, by which it should follow that daisies were twice as diffusable as thistles or dandelion."
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin calvus (“bald, hairless”) (of unclear origin, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *kl̥h₂wós or *kalw- (“bald; naked”), from a root *kl̥H- + *-wós (suffix forming adjectives from verb stems)) + -ous (suffix forming adjectives from nouns, denoting possession or presence of a quality).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkælvəs/
- British English: /ˈkælvəs/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more calvous (comparative)
most calvous (superlative)