Note (return) — ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM LATIN

In classification it seems simplest to take the words according to their Latin stems. We must, however, first deal with a class of adjectives borrowed bodily from the Latin nominative masculine with the insertion of a meaningless o before the final -us.1 These of course follow the rules given above. In words of more than two syllables the antepenultimate and stressed vowel is shortened, as 'ĕmulous' from æmulus and in 'frĭvolous' from frīvolus, except where by the 'alias' rule it is long, as in 'egrēgious' from egrĕgius. Words coined on this analogy also follow the rules. Thus 'glabrous' and 'fibrous' have the vowels long, as in the traditional pronunciation of glabrum and fibrum, where the vowels in classical Latin were short. The stressed u being always long we have 'lugūbrious' and 'salūbrious', the length being independent of the 'alias' rule. Some words ending in -ous are not of this class. Thus 'odorous' and 'clamorous' appear in Italian as odoroso and clamoroso. Milton has