What is a prefix and base word

The English language is a mix of many different languages. Understanding a base word vs. a root word can be confusing. The difference between a base word and a root word may seem simple, but they are actually two entirely different things. One can stand alone, while the other has its roots in ancient language and relies on the addition of other parts of words to be complete.

Basic Parts of a Word

There are three parts to a word. These are:

• Root
• Prefix
• Suffix

Most of the words used in the English language have their origins in Latin or Greek. This is the main meaning of the word. A prefix or suffix added to the root word or base word changes its meaning or defines it in a more concise way.

What Is a Prefix?

A noun prefix is a word or letter or even a number that is placed before a main word. A verb prefix is when something at the beginning is added. An example is, “A preface was prefixed to the history book.”

A short list of prefixes includes:

• Mis- bad or incorrect
• Non- not
• Pro- before or forward
• In- without
• Un- opposite or against
• Re- back or again
• De- away, reverse, from or down
• Dis- opposite or away
• Im- without

For example, the prefix de- when added to the word code changes the meaning of the word and is more concise. The prefix dis- added to the word agree creates an opposite meaning of the original word.

What Is a Suffix?

A group of letters that is placed after a root word is a suffix. Some examples of suffixes include:

• -less without or not affected by
• -er comparative
• -ible capable of
• -able capable of
• -al relating to
• -ness a state or a condition
• -ly in what way
• -est superlative
• -y diminutive or denoting a condition

For instance, the base word comfort with the suffix -able turns it into comfortable. The base word strong with the suffix -est becomes strongest.

What Is a Root Word?

Root words in the English language hail from Latin or Greek words. The root word, or word root, from these ancient languages cannot stand alone. It does not have a prefix at the front of the word or a suffix attached to the end. It is the main lexical unit of a word family and can’t be broken down into words that can stand on their own with meaning.

A few examples of root words include:

• Aud: From Latin, it relates to hearing. Root words include «audible» and «auditorium.»
• Acri: It means bitter and is the base of the root word «acrimony.»
• Corp: This relates to the body and is found in the word «corporate» or «corporation.»
• Deca: From the Greek, this means «ten,» such as «decade.»

What’s a Base Word?

A base word is a word that can stand on its own. It conveys full meaning on its own and doesn’t need a prefix or suffix to carry its connotation.

Happy is a base word and not a root word because it means what it is. Add the prefix un- and it completely changes its meaning into an entirely different word, which is unhappy.

The word view is a base word. Add the suffix -er, and it denotes someone who looks at a view: viewer. Now, add the prefix re- to the base word and you change the word to review. Add both the prefix and suffix for yet another change to the base word view: reviewer.

Presentation on theme: «Prefixes, Suffixes, and Base Words»— Presentation transcript:

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Prefixes, Suffixes, and Base Words
Lesson Goals: 1) Students will learn to identify base words. 2) They will learn the meaning of various prefixes and suffixes. 3) They will learn how these prefixes and suffixes change the meanings of base words.

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Base Words A base word is a word in its simplest form. A
base word has nothing added to it. Examples: Accept Heat Obey Friend Success

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Base Words Write the base words. Played Running Reheat Quickly Unhappy

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Prefixes Prefixes are added to the beginning of a base word. They change the meaning of the base word. Un + success = unsuccessful Re + appear = reappear

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Prefixes The prefix un means not or the opposite of.
Uncomfortable means not comfortable. The prefix mis means wrong or bad. Misbehaving means behaving badly. The prefix re means again. Rewrite means to write again. The prefix pre means before. Preschool means school prior to starting kindergarten.

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Prefixes Draw a line to the meaning of the prefix.
again Opposite of, lack of, not Bad, badly, wrong Not Before Below small im-, in-, non- dis-, in-, non- mis- pre- re- sub- micro-

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Suffixes Suffixes are added to the end of a base word. They change the meaning of the base word. wonder + ful = wonderful large + est = largest happy + ness = happiness

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Suffixes The suffix -ful means full of. Colorful means full of color.
The suffix -ible means capable of being. Sensible means capable of sense. The suffix -ly means in a certain way. Quickly means in a quick way. The suffix -ish means having the quality of. Childish means having the quality of a child.

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Here are some common suffixes:

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Suffixes Draw a line to the meaning of the suffix.
Able to, suitable, or inclined to Forming an action Full of, as much as will fill Someone who, more so Without, that does not Having qualities of, manner or degree Full of -ful -er -ly -able -less -ous -tion

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Activity Complete pages 4 and 5 in Language Power.
When you are done, exchange your questions from yesterday with a partner if you have not done so already.

In English grammar, a base is the form of a word to which prefixes and suffixes can be added to create new words. For example, instruct is the base for forming instruction, instructor, and reinstruct. Also called a root or stem.

Put another way, base forms are words that are not derived from or made up of other words. According to Ingo Plag, «The term ‘root’ is used when we want to explicitly refer to the indivisible central part of a complex word. In all other cases, where the status of a form as indivisible or not is not an issue, we can just speak of bases (or, if the base is a word, base words)» (Word-Formation in English, 2003).

Examples and Observations

«In most situations, the user of English has no problem at all recognizing prefixes, bases, and suffixes. For instance, in the sentence, ‘They repainted the old car,’ the complex word repainted obviously has three elements—a prefix, a base, and a suffix: re + paint + ed. The base paint is the word’s semantic core, the starting place for describing what the word is being used to mean in a given utterance. The prefix and suffix add semantic content to that core, the prefix re adding the content ‘again,’ and the suffix ed adding ‘in the past.'» (D. W. Cummings, American English Spelling. JHU Press, 1988)

Base Forms and Word Roots

«[The term base] refers to any part of a word seen as a unit to which an operation can be applied, as when one adds an affix to a root or stem. For example, in unhappy the base form is happy; if -ness is then added to unhappy, the whole of this item would be considered the base to which the new affix is attached. Some analysts, however, restrict the term ‘base’ to be equivalent to ‘root,’ the part of a word remaining when all affixes have been removed. In such an approach, happy would be the base form (the highest common factor) of all its derivations—

happiness, unhappy, unhappiness, etc. This meaning leads to a special use in prosodic morphology to define the portion of the output in correspondence with another portion of the form, especially the reduplicant.» (David Crystal, Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th ed. Blackwell, 2008)

Citation Forms

«For adjectives, e.g. bad, the base form is the so-called ‘absolute’ form (as against the comparative form worse, or the superlative form worst). For other word classes, e.g. adverb or preposition, where there are no grammatical variants, there is only one form that can be the headword.

«These base forms of words, the headwords of dictionary entries, may be termed the citation forms of lexemes. When we want to talk about the lexeme sing, then the form that we cite (i.e. ‘quote’) is the base form—as I have just done—and that is taken to include all the grammatical variants (sings, singing, sang, sung).» (Howard Jackson, Words and Their Meaning. Routledge, 2013)

Bases in Complex Words

«Another classic problem of morphology [is] the case of a complex word with a recognizable suffix or prefix, attached to a base that is not an existing word of the language. For example, among the -able words are words such as malleable and feasible. In both cases the suffix -able (spelled -ible in the second case because of a different historical origin for the suffix) has the regular meaning ‘be able,’ and in both cases the -ity form is possible (mealleability and feasibility). We have no reason to suspect that able/ible here is not the real suffix -able. Yet if it is, then malleable must be broken down as malle + able and feasible as feas + ible; but there are no existing words (free morphemes) in English such as malle or feas, or even malley or fease. We thus have to allow for the existence of a complex word whose base exists only in that complex word . . ..» (A. Akmajian, R. A. Demers, A. K. Farmer, R. M. Harnish, Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. MIT, 2001)