Greek Roots, Suffixes and Prefixes
Greek roots, suffixes, and prefixes are fundamental elements in the formation of words in the English language. They are derived from the Greek language and are used to create new words or modify the meaning of existing words. Understanding these components can help in deciphering the meanings of unfamiliar words and expanding one's vocabulary.
8 Key excerpts on "Greek Roots, Suffixes and Prefixes"
eBook - ePub- Susan M. Greve(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
...Immigration to the United States also added many words to English, as the immigrants contributed their words to the English language. For example, Yiddish gave English-speakers chutzpah, Yoruba gave goober, and Tagalog gave boondocks. The foundation of English, however, is in German and Latin. Understanding Roots To understand what prefixes and suffixes are, you need to know what a root is. The root is the main part of the word that contains the basic meaning, and you can add affixes to it to create related words. It’s also the form of the word after removing any or all prefixes and suffixes from the word. Prefixes and suffixes change the meaning of the root to which they’re attached. Generally speaking, prefixes don’t usually change the spelling of the root word; however, the spelling of a root word can change when a suffix is added, as in the word inspiration. Here are some simple definitions: A root word is a word to which you can add affixes to create related words (such as hemi-sphere or co-author) A suffix is a word part that you can add to the end of a root word (such as dark-ness) A prefix is a word part that you can add to the beginning of a root word to create a new meaning (such as re-gain or in-complete) The roots of many words in the English language originate in a parent language of English, such as Greek, Latin, or German. You can find the Latin word trudere, for example, in several English words. Trudere in Latin means “to thrust.” From this word comes the English words intrude (to thrust in without invitation), extrude (to thrust something out), and protrude (to stick out). When you add the prefixes in, ex, and pro in front of the root trude, you get different words with slightly different meanings. Suffixes appear at the end of word roots; sometimes they change the spelling as well as the meaning of the root. Take the word credible, for example...
eBook - ePub- Philomena Ott(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...11 How Affixes Provide Signposts and Enhancement of Skills DOI: 10.4324/9780203966075-11 Why the study of the history of words is a key to a treasure trove of spelling knowledge and understanding Why root words are important basic building blocks for word study Checklists of useful root words Prefixes: an overview Checklist of prefixes Practical suggestions for teaching prefixes The role of grammar and its influence on suffixes Checklist of suffixes The ‘Seven Seriously Super Suffixing’ rules The ‘Seven Absolutely Fabulous’ rules for suffixes Practical suggestions for teaching suffixes Summary and conclusions KEYWORDS Affixes Analytic phonics Antonyms Borrowed words Comparative forms of adjectives Euphony Etymology Grapheme High-frequency word Morpheme Morphology Phoneme Prefixes Root words Spelling pronunciation Suffixes Synthetic phonics Word class Word webs Why the study of the history of words is a key to a treasure trove of spelling knowledge and understanding Awareness of the etymology of words, which includes the study of the origins and use of Greek and Latin prefixes, suffixes and root words, enhances skills,. promotes understanding of word meanings and generates many new words. Root words cycl (circle) Greek bicycle loc (place) Latin locate Suffixes ology (study of) Greek biology phobia (excessive fear of) Latin arachnophobia (fear of spiders) Prefixes anti (against) Greek antibiotic circa (around) Latin circulation Understanding of the derivation and meaning of affixes and root words makes them easier to learn to pronounce, to spell and to remember. Brown (1947) established that 60 per cent of words in printed texts were derived from Latin and Greek words. Otterman (1955) conducted an experiment on 12–13-year-olds which included learning about word origins. After thirty ten-minute lessons, the pupils were better at spelling and understanding the meanings of the words when they had been taught the meaning and the derivation of the words studied. Hanna et al...
eBook - ePubLanguage for Life
Where linguistics meets teaching
- Lyn Stone(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Medicine, botany, literature, philosophy and law, to name but a few fields, were and still are strongly influenced by these roots. Some Latin and Greek words and word parts (morphemes) have come through French and other Romance languages (e.g. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian) before entering English. This makes it difficult to accurately assess the extent of the language’s Latin and Greek influence, but some estimates go as high as 60 per cent (Moats, 1998). Many English words derived from classical Greek did not exist in the Greek language itself, but were formed by combining Latin and Greek morphemes. These are called hybrid words and number several thousand. Synaesthesia, polyglot and many of the words beginning with hyper - or ending with - phobia are examples of this hybridisation. Many words in English have been formed using roots from various other languages as well as by different methods of combination. We will explore word-formation in this chapter. Activities Activity 16.1 —Variable vs invariable root words The study of root words reveals all kinds of valuable information. For instance, did you know that there are two types of words? There are variable words, such as house, run and good, and there are invariable words like myself, about, so and whether. Invariable words are not able to be changed. We can’t add prefixes or suffixes to them. With a noun like house, how can we vary it? (Houses, Housing, Housed) How about run ? (Running, Runner, Ran) And good ? (Goodness, Goods) But myself ? (No Variants) Try varying so or whether. (You Cannot) Most of our words are variable. We can study their structure by isolating their parts. These isolated parts are called morphemes, from a Greek word, meaning ‘form’ or ‘shape’...
eBook - ePubIndo-European Language and Culture
An Introduction
- Benjamin W. Fortson(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...4 Proto-Indo-European Morphology: Introduction The Root and Indo-European Morphophonemics 4.1. Morphology is the study of the rules governing word-formation and inflection; the term also refers to the set of rules themselves in a given language. Words consist of one or more morphemes, the smallest meaningful units in a language. Morphemes can be whole words (e.g. Eng. bed, succotash, sarsaparilla) or parts of words such as affixes (e.g. the Eng. prefix un- and suffix -ed). In many languages, some morphemes can appear in different forms called allomorphs depending on their phonetic or morphological context (e.g. the Eng. prefix in- ‘not’ can appear as in-, im-, il-, ir-, as in in-credible, im-perfect, il-logical, ir-replaceable). The morphophonemics of a language is the set of rules determining the distribution of allomorphs. A root is a morpheme from which semantically related words can be derived. The root itself does not usually exist as an independent form, but carries the semantic core of any word derived from it. In English, for example, the words commit, emit, transmit, remission, and missive are all derived from a root mit (borrowed from Latin) that conveys the basic meaning ‘send’. When reconstructing the vocabulary of PIE, typically it is roots that are reconstructed in the first instance (see below, 4.11, for more on this). Since they did not stand alone, they are conventionally cited with an added hyphen (e.g. * sed- ‘sit’), indicating that suffixes had to be added to form free-standing words. Besides the attachment of suffixes (and sometimes, but more rarely, prefixes and infixes – affixes added into the middle of a root), word-formation in PIE often required modification of the shape of the root itself, in ways to be discussed further below. Unlike sounds, morphemes do not necessarily change in an exceptionless and regular way over time...
eBook - ePub- Laurie E. Rozakis(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
...Chapter 6 Starting Off with Prefixes In This Chapter Decoding unfamiliar words through prefixes Getting familiar with a few Greek and Latin prefixes Discovering the uses of Anglo-Saxon prefixes Using words that function as prefixes K nowing common prefixes is very useful because it enables you to figure out the meaning of many unfamiliar words. In addition, by discovering the building blocks of words, you can easily understand and master thousands of helpful English words. In this chapter, you discover how prefixes can help you improve your vocabulary — without breaking a sweat. The ancient alchemists wanted to change lead into gold. They didn’t succeed, but you can by using prefixes to decode unfamiliar words. And that’s only the beginning. Knowing just a handful of prefixes can make it easy for you to figure out the definitions of many words — without ever having to use a dictionary. Going to the Head of the Word A prefix is a letter or a group of letters that appears at the beginning of a word and changes the meaning of the original word in such a way that you have a different word. For example, if the base word is make, “to create, or bring into being,” and you attach the prefix re-, “do again,” to it, you create a different word: remake, which means “to make again or anew” as a verb, or “something remade” as a noun. In this case, the prefix alters the word’s original meaning. Sometimes the prefix actually creates a derivative word. You can’t remove the prefix, for example, and still have a word that means anything. Take, for example, the word pseudonym (soo -duh-nim). This English word is derived (or made up of) two Greek elements: the prefix pseudo- (false) and the root onyma (name). Knowing this, you can figure out that a pseudonym is a false name. Similarly, anonymous (uh- nahn -uh-mus) comes from the Greek prefix a- (without) and the root onyma (name)...
eBook - ePubInfusing Vocabulary Into the Reading-Writing Workshop
A Guide for Teachers in Grades K-8
- Amy Benjamin(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Appendix D Analysis of Forty Latin and Greek Word Roots for Mini-Lessons The time you spend in teaching Latin word roots as mini-lessons will pay off in myriad ways. Learning any of the following roots will yield knowledge of several related words, and then each related word that has developed from a given root will be made more memorable because the words are connected by a common meaning. Because of their connectedness, these words often appear together in the same text, so learning them together can strengthen comprehension in a reading piece and build cohesion in a writing piece. The study of etymology not only illuminates meaning; it also enlightens us about the social and cultural nature of language itself. We know that words have shades of meaning in various contexts, with some words being variable and others more fixed. But word meanings can also vary over time, sometimes to the extent that etymologists puzzle over their origins. Like family members who move far away from their relatives, some words, over time, are used in ways that resemble their relatives on the etymology tree only vaguely, leaving us to wonder. And, let’s not forget that knowledge about Latin and Greek roots makes us less intimidated by long words, giving us a tool for breaking them down. The trouble is, lists of word roots alone are not engaging, and therefore not memorable. We need to create activities for students to engage them in each word root. One such way can be in the form of a mini-lesson, as follows: How to structure the mini-lesson (note that this mini-lesson can be broken up over several days): Draw a tree. As “apples” on the tree, write a few examples of familiar words sharing the same root. Using think-pair-share, ask students to talk about what the (familiar) words mean. Then, ask them to make a hypothesis as to what all of these words have in common. Write the root and its brief definition on the base of the tree. Add two or three more words to the tree...
eBook - ePubRootedness
The Ramifications of a Metaphor
- Christy Wampole(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
...This emphasis placed on roots and radicals in languages making use of inflections raises particular problems that are far from being applicable to human language universally. What would be the case with Chinese, for example, where all the signifying units are monosyllabic? The notion of root is highly tenuous. In fact, what is involved is an illusion that is linked to the development of language, of the use of the language system, which can only seem very suspect to us. Lacan, Ethics, 167 Using this comparative approach, Lacan shows that this difference between Chinese and European languages refutes the notion that all languages began with elementary units that eventually clustered or burgeoned to form more complex units in time. 76 Paulhan, La preuve, 18. 77 Of calembours and etymologies, Paulhan writes: “D’où vient sans doute le caractère comique de telles phrases: c’est qu’elles ne tiennent pas la promesse qu’elles ont un instant paru nous faire, et ne nous offrent qu’une explication sitôt ruinée qu’ébauchée.” Ibid., 66. 78 Cécile Hanania dedicated an entire book to the relationship between Roland Barthes and etymology, for example. She writes in the introduction, “Throughout his critical development and regardless of which theoretical movements one associated with him or that he belonged to, Roland Barthes appealed constantly to etymological filiations or deductions—proven or imagined—in his analyses and reflections.” Hanania, Roland Barthes, 16. In his use of the discipline, Barthes seemed to oscillate between etymologies used as a legitimate philological tools and as “etymologies constructed at the whim of imaginary and playful associations” (201–2). 79 Derrida’s analysis of the pharmakon in his essay “Plato’s Pharmacy” is perhaps the best-known example of this argument...
eBook - ePubAcquiring a Scientific Vocabulary
A Short Course for Building Lexical Literacy for Advancing AP and College Students
- Anthony M. Belmont(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- BrownWalker Press(Publisher)
...Combining Prefixes, Roots, and Suffixes Lesson 2: Parts of Speech Review, Prefixes Denoting Position and/or Order, Roots – Body Parts Parts of Speech Review I n English there are eight basic parts of speech or functions of words in sentences. The same is true of scientific words and tenns. There are many affixes which indicate the functions of words. The word functions that will most concern the student in this text will be· nouns, (n), verbs, (v), adjectives, (adj), adverbs, (adv), prepositions, (prep), and occasionally conjunctions, (conj). Pronouns and interjections are not important for the purposes of this kind of study. These functions of the affixes will be found in parentheses after the suffixes. Most word functions are indicated by the suffix. For example, the terminal s on cow means more than one cow, and an ‘s on cow’s, indicates something belonging to a cow. For this reason, parts of speech and functions will be given for suffixes. Nouns are the most common words in scientific vocabularies. A noun is the name of a person, place, condition, or thing. Verbs are names of actions or conditions. For example, run is a verb of action and sick is a verb of condition. Some words and word parts have several functions. For example, the word disease is both a noun and a verb of condition. An adjective is a word which modifies a noun or pronoun. Prepositions are words which denote the position of one thing in relation to another. For example, in the sentence “The book is on the table,” the preposition on shows the relationship of the book to the table. Conjunctions are words or phrases which connect sentences, clauses, phrases, or words: e.g...
