Etymology Explorer › English

Where does “slanderous” come from?

Slanderous derives from Old French esclandre, from Latin scandalum meaning a stumbling block or cause of offense, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European skand-.

slanderous (English): Both untrue and harmful to a reputation

Definitions

  1. Both untrue and harmful to a reputation

Ancestry of “slanderous”, step by step

StepLanguageWordMeaning
1English-ousUsed to form adjectives from nouns, to denote...
2Middle English-ous—
3Old French-us-ous, used for forming adjectives
4Latin-ōsus—
5Old Latin-ōssus—

Words derived from “slanderous”

  • slanderously
  • unslanderous
  • slanderousness
Every word from Old Latin -ōssus →