That would indicate that you have treasonable people and treasonous acts. Which would disagree with The Treasonable Practices Act, but that was passed in 1795, so their English might be outdated.
I'd have thought that treasonous people and treasonable acts made more sense, but that's purely instinct talking.
or traitors? I had no idea about the difference bewtween treasonable and treasonous. I spent way too long today wondering why it was Surveyor and not Surveyer. anyone?
The -er suffix to denote an agent derives from Old English, whilst -or comes from Latin via French. 'Survey' is a borrowing from French, so naturally attracts the French form.
A quick scan of the OED suggests that the terms are mutually interchangeable. They both exist because there is more than one way of forming adjectives. Evidently in this case neither has been able to fully drive the other out of use (though I'd reckon 'treasonous' is winning at the moment).
It may be that the two adjectives are formed from different words. The Latin derived -ous suffix is principally (though not exclusively) a means of adjectivizing nouns, whilst the French derived -able adjectivizes verbs. There is a verb 'treason', though it's rare now, and perhaps that explains the existence of 'treasonable'. However, the OED says its derived from the noun. There is also 'treasonful', which again doesn't seem to have a significant difference in meaning from the others.
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I'd have thought that treasonous people and treasonable acts made more sense, but that's purely instinct talking.
Googling all sixcombimations gives me:
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(in other words, I have no idea!)
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A quick scan of the OED suggests that the terms are mutually interchangeable. They both exist because there is more than one way of forming adjectives. Evidently in this case neither has been able to fully drive the other out of use (though I'd reckon 'treasonous' is winning at the moment).
It may be that the two adjectives are formed from different words. The Latin derived -ous suffix is principally (though not exclusively) a means of adjectivizing nouns, whilst the French derived -able adjectivizes verbs. There is a verb 'treason', though it's rare now, and perhaps that explains the existence of 'treasonable'. However, the OED says its derived from the noun. There is also 'treasonful', which again doesn't seem to have a significant difference in meaning from the others.
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