W
hen you come across unfamiliar words without context, breaking
those words into their parts can help you determine their meaning. This
chapter reviews prefixes and suffixes and how you can use them to add new words
to your vocabulary—and better understand words you already know.
A good knowledge of prefixes and suffixes is essential to building an effective
vocabulary. The more familiar you are with these fundamental word parts, the eas-
ier it will be to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words.
There are dozens of prefixes and suffixes in the English language. Learning pre-
fixes and suffixes in another language may seem like a daunting task, but the job may
be easier than you think. Though prefixes and suffixes often appear in books like
this with sophisticated vocabulary words, you are already using the same prefixes
and suffixes with simple words that you already know well.
PREFIXES
Prefixes are syllables attached to the beginning of words to change or add to the
meaning of the root word in some way. For example, the word prefix itself uses the
prefix pre-, meaning before. Thus the meaning of the root word, fix, changes:
Using Prefixes and Suffixes
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