Prefixes and suffixes are sets of letters that are added to
the beginning or end of another word. They are not words in their own right and
cannot stand on their own in a sentence: if they are printed on their own they
have a hyphen before or after them.
Prefixes
Prefixes are added to the beginning of an existing word in
order to create a new word with a different meaning. For example:
Word prefix new word
Happy
Cultural multi multicultural
Work over overwork
Space cyber cyberspace
Market super supermarket
Suffixes
Suffixes are added to the end of an existing word. For
example:
Word suffix new word
Child -ish childish
Work -er worker
Taste -less tasteless
idol -ize/-ise idolize/idolize
Like -able likeable
The addition of a suffix often changes a word from one word
class to another. In the table above, the verb like becomes the adjective
likeable, the noun idol becomes the verb idolize, and the noun child becomes
the adjective childish.
Word creation with prefixes and suffixes
Some prefixes and suffixes are part of our living language,
in that people regularly use them to create new words for modern products,
concepts, or situations. For example:
Word prefix or
suffix new word
Security bio- biosecurity
Clutter de- declutter
Media multi- multimedia
Email -er emailer
Email is an example of a word that was itself formed from a
new prefix, e-, which stands for electronic. This modern prefix has formed an
ever-growing number of other Internet-related words, including e-book, e-cash,
e-commerce, and e-tailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment