Cautious

How to spell cautious

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cautious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cautious mean?

1. adjectiveCareful to avoid risk or danger; acting with caution.

Cautious in a sentence

• The bank takes a cautious approach when lending to new businesses.

• He was cautious about driving on the icy roads before dawn.

Where does cautious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin cautus, meaning 'wary' or 'on guard', which was the past participle of cavere, 'to beware' or 'to take care'. That same verb cavere lies behind the legal warning caveat, literally 'let him beware', so a cautious person and a caveat are quietly related. English added the familiar Latin-derived ending -ous, in the form -ious, to build the adjective during the early 1600s, giving 'full of caution'. The noun 'caution' had already entered English somewhat earlier through Old French. The tricky spelling lives in that unstressed middle: the -tious cluster sounds simply like 'shus', which is why writers often grope between -tious, -cious, and -shus when the word is written from memory.

How the word is built

• caut- (from cautus: wary, careful)
• -ious (adjective suffix: full of)