coriaceous

The last syllable of coriaceous says shus and is written with four letters, none of which is an s or an h. Five of the six spellings on file here are attempts to do something about that.

Leathery. A blade thick and stiff enough to keep its shape when you bend it, as in holly, laurel, camellia and most evergreen rhododendrons.

Latin corium is leather or hide, and coriaceus means made of it. The same corium is buried in two other English words: a cuirass was a leather breastplate, and to excoriate was once to strip the hide off something. The -ceous ending belongs to a whole set of botanical adjectives, herbaceous and farinaceous among them, and all of them say shus.