SUFFIXES and PREFIXES

What can you do when you run into a word that you don’t know? One thing that may help is to analyze the word, looking for groups of letters that have special meanings. A group of letters with a special meaning appearing at theend of a word is called a suffix. Here is a list of 16 important suffixes.

Suffix	Meaning	Example
-able	able to be	manageable
-ible		defensible
-al	relating to	regal
-ance		resistance
-ence		independence
-ic		heroic
-ion	state of	union
-ism	quality of	patriotism
-hood		brotherhood
-ity		legality
-ment		puzzlement
-er	one who	writer
-or		advisor
-ite		Mennonite
-y	full of	soapy
-ful		wishful

When a group of letters having a special meaning appears at the beginning of a word, we call that group of letters aprefix. Following is a list of 10 prefixes all dealing with counting.

Prefix	Meaning	Example
uni-	one	unicycle
mono-	one	monologue
auto-	self	autobiography
duo-	two	duodecimal
bi-	two	bifocal
tri-	three	tripod
penta-	five	pentagon
hexa-	six	hexadecimal
poly-	many	polygon
multi-	many	multicolored

Suffixes -

Suffixes come at the end of a word, and can change its meaning, or what type of word it is. '-er' and '-or' are the most common and change verbs to nouns to describe a person or thing that does a job. For example:

Write - writer (a person who writes)

Sail - sailor (a person who sails)

Grate - grater (a thing which grates, like a cheese-grater)

'-tion' also makes nouns from verbs:

Reduce - reduction

Pollute - pollution

Other suffixes which make nouns from verbs include '-ist', which can mean a person with certain beliefs or maybe a job or activity (racist, terrorist, physicist, pianist), and '-ism' which describes the activity or set or beliefs (racism, Buddhism). '-ment' and '-ity' also make nouns from verbs (excitement, productivity).

'-ness' makes nouns from adjectives (goodness, happiness, sadness).

'-ise' and '-ize' make verbs from adjectives (modernise).

There are lots of suffixes which make adjectives, here are a few:

'-ful' - forgetful

'-ous' - furious

'-able' / '-ible' - edible, justifiable

'-less' - useless

Learning which suffixes make which types of words can really help to improve your vocabulary. The best idea is to 'build' words that you have learned, by checking in the dictionary and making a note of all the suffixes that can be added to it to change it into a different type of word.

Prefixes -

Prefixes do a completely different job! They come at the beginning of a word and give adjectives a negative meaning. They also sometimes make opposites of verbs. Here are some examples:

'Un-' - uncomfortable

'In-' - inconvenient

'Dis-' - dissimilar

I'm afraid you just have to learn which prefixes go with which words, but as you learn more you will start to get a feeling for what sounds right. For example, do you think that the correct prefix for 'happy' is 'un-', 'in-' or 'dis-'? It's 'un-' of course, unhappy sounds correct, but inhappy or dishappy sounds wrong.

There are a couple of rules to help though:

Words which start with 'm' or 'p' take the prefix 'im-' (impatient)

Words which start with 'r' take 'ir-' (irresponsible)

Words which start with 'l' take 'il-' (illegitimate)