Adjective: envious
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more envious |
| Superlative | most envious |
Sample Sentences
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an envious man, disposition, or attack; envious tongues
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Fret not thy ſelfe becauſe of euill doers, neither bee thou enuious againſt the workers of iniquitie. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 37:1:]
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My soul is envious of mine eye. [1827, [John Keble], The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [B]y W. Baxter, for J. Parker; and C[harles] and J[ohn] Rivington, […], →OCLC:]
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for no man was ever so amorous, as to love a toad; none so envious, as to repine at the condition of the miserable [1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Francis Ashe […], →OCLC:]
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Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch. [1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC:]
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He to him leapt, and that same envious gage / Of victors glory from him snatcht away. [1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 39:]
Adjectives inflected like envious
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle English envious, from Anglo-Norman envious, from Old French envieus, envious (modern French envieux), from Latin invidiōsus; more at envy. Doublet of invidious, borrowed directly from Latin. Displaced native Old English æfestiġ. See: French Adjectives '
envieux', Latin Adjectives '
invidiōsus'.