a plenteous supply of napkins for the backyard barbecue
Recent Examples on the WebBecause the communal areas of the house are voluminous and plenteous, furniture and art choices needed to skew extra large. Charles Curkin, ELLE Decor, 13 July 2022 Early accounts say the bird used to be so plenteous that flocks would darken the sky. Story Hinckley, The Christian Science Monitor, 10 July 2018
Word History
Etymology
Middle English plenteus, plenteous, plenteouse, borrowed from Anglo-French plenteos, plentuous "rich, fertile, abounding, plentiful," probably from plenté "abundance, plenty entry 2" + -os, -ous-ous
Note: These Middle English and Anglo-French forms are far outnumbered by variants with medial -v-/-f-/-u-: plentevous, plenteuous, plentiuous, plentifus, etc., for English, and plentivous, plentevous, etc., for French. These have been taken as suffixation with -ous of Anglo-French plentif "abundant, plentiful," apparently formed from plenté and -if-ive. It is uncertain if plenteus, etc., is formed as shown in the above etymology, or from vocalization and deletion of /v/, perhaps after shift of the stress to the initial syllable; the use of <u> and <v> as interchangeable graphic variants for /v/ or /w/ or /u/ allow for a variety of readings. A full display of these and other variants can be found in Middle English Dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary, third edition.