8th Grade spelling
8th Grade Words Ending in Cious and Tious
Sort words ending in cious and tious: gracious, spacious, cautious, nutritious, infectious. Play hangman or print a worksheet with answers.
Read the spelling list
The pattern: Both endings say /shus/. Cious is the more common; tious often follows a word that ends in tion (caution, cautious).
Cious and tious are two spellings of the same sound, /shus/, in adjectives. Cious is more common and often follows a base with a c, as in space and spacious or grace and gracious. Tious usually follows a base that has a tion, such as caution and cautious, nutrition and nutritious, or infection and infectious. Both are forms of the suffix ous, and the ti or ci comes from the Latin letters before it.
The list is split into the two groups. The cious group includes malicious, gracious, spacious, ferocious, atrocious, tenacious, luscious, audacious and precocious. The tious group includes infectious, cautious, contentious, fictitious, conscientious, nutritious, pretentious and facetious. Eighth graders meet these in literature and in nonfiction, where a writer might call a character audacious or a plan contentious, so the words belong in a writer's working vocabulary.
28 entries. Our solver needed 0.8 wrong guesses on average: 21 easy, 7 medium and 0 hard. The toughest is spacious (2 misses), the quickest tenacious (0).
-cious
- malicious Easy · 1
- gracious Easy · 1
- spacious Medium · 2
- ferocious Easy · 1
- atrocious Easy · 1
- auspicious Easy · 1
- tenacious Easy · 0
- luscious Medium · 2
- audacious Medium · 2
- pernicious Easy · 0
- precocious Easy · 0
- capricious Easy · 1
- voracious Medium · 2
- judicious Medium · 2
-tious
- infectious Easy · 0
- cautious Medium · 2
- contentious Easy · 0
- fictitious Easy · 1
- conscientious Easy · 0
- nutritious Easy · 1
- pretentious Easy · 0
- ostentatious Easy · 0
- seditious Easy · 0
- unpretentious Easy · 0
- facetious Easy · 0
- rambunctious Easy · 0
- fractious Medium · 2
- expeditious Easy · 1
Words worth a closer look
- graciousGrace plus ous with the c from grace kept. A tidy cious word.
- spaciousSpace plus ious. The silent e is replaced by the cious ending.
- cautiousCaution gives cautious. A model for the tious group.
- nutritiousNutrition gives nutritious. Often misspelled nutricious.
- conscientiousFour syllables, and conscience sits inside it, so start there. The sci and the tious are the two hard spots.
Teaching it
The best clue is the related noun. If the base word ends in tion, as in caution, nutrition or infection, expect tious. If it ends in ce or c, as in space, grace or malice, expect cious. Words such as ferocious and atrocious have no such partner, so they are learned as shapes. The typical mistake is spelling the sound as shus (cautshus), or swapping the two letters, giving spacitious or cautcious.
In hangman, the ending is the last thing players tend to guess, so play the base first. After solving, ask which noun the word relates to. Print the worksheet as a two-column sort and have students write the base noun beside each word.
Print a 8th Grade Words Ending in Cious and Tious worksheet
Eight puzzles on one US Letter page, with a clue, letter blanks, an empty frame to draw in, an alphabet strip to cross off and circles to count misses. Page two is the answer key.
Need another sheet?
Draw eight different words from this list, right here. Same layout, new answer key.
Keep going
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- 8th Grade PH WordsWords where ph spells the f sound: physical, philosophy, atmosphere, alphabet, dolphin. Play hangman or print a spelling worksheet.
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- 8th Grade Advanced Silent Letter WordsSilent letters in psychology, rhythm, column, design and foreign. Sort ps, rh, mn and gn words, then play hangman or print a worksheet.
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