Knowing the Greek and Latin roots of several prefixes and suffixes (beginning and endings attached to words) can also help us determine the meaning of words. Let’s expand your TOEIC vocabulary and have fun with learning new words by using root words below:
| Prefixes showing quantity | ||
 |
Meaning | Prefixes in English Words |
|
half | semiannual, hemisphere |
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one | unicycle, monarchy, monorail |
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two | binary, bimonthly, dilemma, dichotomy |
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hundred | century, centimeter, hectoliter |
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thousand | millimeter, kilometer |
| Prefixes showing negation | ||
|
without, no, not | asexual, anonymous, illegal, immoral, invalid, irreverent, unskilled |
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not, absence of, opposing, against | nonbreakable, antacid, antipathy, contradict |
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opposite to, complement to | counterclockwise, counterweight |
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do the opposite of, remove, reduce | dehorn, devitalize, devalue |
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do the opposite of, deprive of | disestablish, disarm |
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wrongly, bad | misjudge, misdeed |
| Prefixes showing time | ||
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before | antecedent, forecast, precede, prologue |
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after | postwar |
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again | rewrite, redundant |
| Prefixes showing direction or position | ||
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above, over | supervise, supererogatory |
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across, over | transport, translate |
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below, under | infrasonic, infrastructure, subterranean, hypodermic |
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in front of | proceed, prefix |
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behind | recede |
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out of | erupt, explicit, ecstasy |
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into | injection, immerse, encourage, empower |
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around | circumnavigate, perimeter |
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with | coexist, colloquy, communicate, consequence, correspond, sympathy, synchronize |
Ante, for instance, means before, and if we connect bellum with belligerant to figure out the connection with war, we’ll know that antebellum refers to the period before war. (In the United States, the antebellum period is our history before the Civil War.
Suffixes, on the other hand, modify the meaning of a word and frequently determine its function within a sentence. Take the noun nation, for example. With suffixes, the word becomes the adjective national, the adverb nationally, and the verb nationalize.
See what words you can come up with that use the following suffixes.
- Typical noun suffixes are -ence, -ance, -or, -er, -ment, -list, -ism, -ship, -ency, -sion, -tion, -ness, -hood, -dom
- Typical verb suffixes are -en, -ify, -ize, -ate
- Typical adjective suffixes are -able, -ible, -al, -tial, -tic, -ly, -ful, -ous, -tive, -less, -ish, -ulent
- The adverb suffix is -ly (although not all words that end in -ly are adverbs—like friendly)
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