A suffix meaning 'bearing' or 'producing,' as in 'odiferous' (producing odor) or 'pestiferous' (bearing plague); used in compound adjectives.
From Latin '-ferus,' derived from 'ferre' (to bear or carry); combined with noun stems to indicate that something carries or produces that quality.
The suffix '-ferous' is hidden in dozens of English words—'pestiferous,' 'odiferous,' 'carboniferous'—and they all follow the same Latin logic: they name things by what they carry or produce, making it easy to guess a word's meaning once you know the pattern.
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