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According to wiktionary, these are the examples of -th "Used to form nouns of quality from adjectives. (no longer productive except jocular coinages)": breadth

• eastbound 2y ago
  When you want to make them adjectives again… add a “y”: wealthy, truthy, healthy… (As a foreigner I’m curious what the original adjective was for filth, length, ruth, wealthy, wrath).
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • jeroenhd 2y ago
    > As a foreigner I’m curious what the original adjective was for filth, length, ruth, wealthy, wrath Looked the ones I didn't know the adjectives of up on wiktionary: foul, long, rue, possibly the archaic "wele" (but there are multiple etymological paths), and basically "wrath" but pronounced slightly differently going back thousands of years.
    • xerox13ster 2y ago
      Wealthy's root form is weal. As in we should do things for the common weal of the people. Weal is defined as happiness, well-being, prosperity, or that which is best for someone.
  • ks2048 2y ago
    As a native English speaker there are words there that I've never seen and others were I would not know the original adjective. In wiktionary, you can click them see etymology, here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-th#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-th#English For example, apparently "filth" comes from the equivalent of "foul".
  • checkyoursudo 2y ago
    Earthy means someone with big ears. Or lots of ears, maybe. I am a little surprised that ruth is spelled that way instead of like rueth, which seems more like how I would expect it to be said.
  • musicale 2y ago
    length <- long strength <- strong
• Mordisquitos 2y ago
  > "Used to form nouns of quality from adjectives. (no longer productive except jocular coinages)" But enough jocularth can eventually result in -th becoming productive again!
  • thfuran 2y ago
    I'd prefer we focus our efforts on -le.
• SamBam 2y ago
  > heighth I've heard this said, and seen this in plenty of codebases. `let width = 10, heighth = 10` Its intuitive match to "width" makes me wonder why it ever became "incorrect."
  • brookst 2y ago
    Too many aitches + four consonants in a row. It just looks weird.
    • SamBam 2y ago
      That's probably the reason for eliminating the written word. Saying "width and heighth" still sounds pretty reasonable (I have to stop myself from saying it), and I hear it all the time.
      • brookst 2y ago
        Good catch. I do say "heighth" but spell it "height." It's like the opposite of a silent H; an invisible H or something.