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- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
Root words can help you to break down large, new words into smaller units to discover their meanings. Learning just one root word can help you understand several words in English.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
So, by learning just 20 or 30 root words, you can expand your English vocabulary to include hundreds of new words.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
A root can be any part of a word that carries meaning: the beginning, middle or end. Prefixes, bases, and suffixes are types of roots.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
The prefix appears at the beginning of a word, the base in the middle and the suffix at the end. Most English root words came from the Greek and Latin languages.
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Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
base. Let's try an example: the base word “struct-.”
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Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
It comes from the Latin word meaning “build.”
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
Any English word you hear containing “struct-”* will relate to building, developing or creating something.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
By itself, “struct” is not a word, but it is the basis for more than 30 words in English.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
For example, the word “construct” is a verb that means “to build.” The prefix “con” means “together” or “with.”
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
So, "construct" means to put things together to build or create something. Adding suffixes to “struct-” creates additional words.
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Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
For example, adding “-ion” in English makes verbs into nouns.
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Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
Adding the suffix “-ing” to “construct” makes “constructing.” That is the gerund form and has a similar meaning as the noun "construction."
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Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
Adding the suffix “-ive” to make “constructive” gives us the adjective form, and means helpful in developing or improving something.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
Now, let's build onto “constructive."
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
Adding the suffix “ly” to "constructive" gives us the word “constructively” and produces an adverb. It means doing something in a way that is helpful.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
There are many other words that the base word “struct” produces. For instance, “destruction” is the opposite of “construction.”
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
"Destruction" is the act of taking apart or damaging something that was built.
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Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
"Instruction" means the act of building knowledge and has a similar meaning to the gerund "teaching."
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Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
And, just like with "construct," you can add many suffixes to "destruct" or "instruct" to get several more words.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
The suffixes may include -ion, -ing, -ive, ing+ly
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
or -ive+ly So, you see, by knowing just one root word “struct-” you can get a better idea of the meaning of at least 15 words in English.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
A few other common root words include “bio" meaning life, “auto” meaning self, “pro” meaning before or in favor of, and “tele”
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Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
meaning distance. Surely, you recognize some of these roots.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Grow Your Vocabulary by Learning Root Words
So, choose one or two and write in the comments section all of the words you can think of that come from them. Join us again soon when we will discuss suffixes and prefixes.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Halloween in America: Costumes, Candy, Costs for Night of Fright
October 31 is Halloween. But many Americans have been preparing for the holiday for weeks.
Source badges: Public domain · Creator video · Digital presenter · Reference recording. Literary passages are public domain. Studio notes are not spoken in the audio.