Anglo Saxon Roots and Prefixes
Anglo-Saxon roots and prefixes are the foundation of many English words, contributing to the language's rich vocabulary. These elements, derived from Old English, often convey meanings related to time, space, and relationships. Understanding these roots and prefixes can help in deciphering the meanings of unfamiliar words and in building a stronger grasp of the English language.
7 Key excerpts on "Anglo Saxon Roots and Prefixes"
eBook - ePub- Susan M. Greve(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
...Immigration to the United States also added many words to English, as the immigrants contributed their words to the English language. For example, Yiddish gave English-speakers chutzpah, Yoruba gave goober, and Tagalog gave boondocks. The foundation of English, however, is in German and Latin. Understanding Roots To understand what prefixes and suffixes are, you need to know what a root is. The root is the main part of the word that contains the basic meaning, and you can add affixes to it to create related words. It’s also the form of the word after removing any or all prefixes and suffixes from the word. Prefixes and suffixes change the meaning of the root to which they’re attached. Generally speaking, prefixes don’t usually change the spelling of the root word; however, the spelling of a root word can change when a suffix is added, as in the word inspiration. Here are some simple definitions: A root word is a word to which you can add affixes to create related words (such as hemi-sphere or co-author) A suffix is a word part that you can add to the end of a root word (such as dark-ness) A prefix is a word part that you can add to the beginning of a root word to create a new meaning (such as re-gain or in-complete) The roots of many words in the English language originate in a parent language of English, such as Greek, Latin, or German. You can find the Latin word trudere, for example, in several English words. Trudere in Latin means “to thrust.” From this word comes the English words intrude (to thrust in without invitation), extrude (to thrust something out), and protrude (to stick out). When you add the prefixes in, ex, and pro in front of the root trude, you get different words with slightly different meanings. Suffixes appear at the end of word roots; sometimes they change the spelling as well as the meaning of the root. Take the word credible, for example...
eBook - ePub- Laurie E. Rozakis(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
...I sure hope you kiss better than you speak. Pursuing Prefixes from Latin Latin — not to be outdone by the Greek language — has also given us some extremely useful prefixes. Several have been mentioned earlier in this chapter: many of the number prefixes (see the section “Counting on prefixes that show number”), and a- (to or toward), for example. There are a whole bunch of others; Table 6-12 lists a few of these gems. It’s more accurate to say that these prefixes are derived from Latin words. Whether any particular cluster of letters is a prefix or not depends on whether that cluster appears at the beginning of the word. Some of these prefixes can also be used as roots. See Chapter 5 for more on the root words. Adding In Anglo-Saxon Prefixes The 100 most often used words in the English language all come from the Anglo-Saxons — as do 83 of the next 100 words in this book. And, of course, the Anglo-Saxons got many of their words from the Romans; so where these prefixes originated is hard to determine. But because they’re so often used and share meanings, I grouped the main Anglo-Saxon prefixes in this section. The most common Anglo-Saxon prefixes — il-, im-, and ir- — all have the same two meanings. Il-, im-, and ir- can mean either “in,” “into,” or “not.” The following list gives you examples of each meaning with each prefix. For more on these prefixes, refer to the earlier section “Seeing Prefixes Everywhere: De-, Re-, In-, Un-, and Pre-.” In or into: •illuminate (bring in light) •import (bring in from abroad) •irradiate (let x-rays into) Not: •illiterate (not able to read) •immodest (not modest) •irregular (not regular) You generally won’t have a problem figuring out which meaning these prefixes draw on for any particular word, unless you confuse the adjectives irrefutable, which means “cannot be disproved,” and irresolute, which means “indecisive.” Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that because everybody uses it, it must be right...
eBook - ePubIndo-European Language and Culture
An Introduction
- Benjamin W. Fortson(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...4 Proto-Indo-European Morphology: Introduction The Root and Indo-European Morphophonemics 4.1. Morphology is the study of the rules governing word-formation and inflection; the term also refers to the set of rules themselves in a given language. Words consist of one or more morphemes, the smallest meaningful units in a language. Morphemes can be whole words (e.g. Eng. bed, succotash, sarsaparilla) or parts of words such as affixes (e.g. the Eng. prefix un- and suffix -ed). In many languages, some morphemes can appear in different forms called allomorphs depending on their phonetic or morphological context (e.g. the Eng. prefix in- ‘not’ can appear as in-, im-, il-, ir-, as in in-credible, im-perfect, il-logical, ir-replaceable). The morphophonemics of a language is the set of rules determining the distribution of allomorphs. A root is a morpheme from which semantically related words can be derived. The root itself does not usually exist as an independent form, but carries the semantic core of any word derived from it. In English, for example, the words commit, emit, transmit, remission, and missive are all derived from a root mit (borrowed from Latin) that conveys the basic meaning ‘send’. When reconstructing the vocabulary of PIE, typically it is roots that are reconstructed in the first instance (see below, 4.11, for more on this). Since they did not stand alone, they are conventionally cited with an added hyphen (e.g. * sed- ‘sit’), indicating that suffixes had to be added to form free-standing words. Besides the attachment of suffixes (and sometimes, but more rarely, prefixes and infixes – affixes added into the middle of a root), word-formation in PIE often required modification of the shape of the root itself, in ways to be discussed further below. Unlike sounds, morphemes do not necessarily change in an exceptionless and regular way over time...
- Heming Yong, Jing Peng(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It has also given English lexicography the cutting edge in both theoretical and practical explorations. English lexicography boasts a history of over 1,200 years, counting approximately from the appearance of The Leiden Glossary, but it has its deep roots in the Latin language and the making of Latin glossaries and dictionaries as well as Old English and the making of Old English glossaries and wordbooks. 1.1 The origin and development of the English language – from Old English to Middle English English, which has its deepest roots in Anglo-Frisian dialects spoken by the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe from the mid-5th to the 7th centuries, was developed from Old English and spread far and wide with the gradual shaping of the sun-never-setting British empire, initially through territorial expansion and colonization, and in modern times through reinforcement and consolidation of Britain and America’s international importance in political, economic, cultural and military arenas. As a modern international language, English has reached out to different parts of the world, unprecedented and unparalleled in the scope of its use, in the areas of its penetration, in the profoundness of its impacts and in the number of speakers. Present-day English boasts 375 million speakers who use it as the first language, second to Chinese and Spanish when viewed from the number of native speakers and only next to Chinese when the number of non-native speakers is taken into account...
eBook - ePubRootedness
The Ramifications of a Metaphor
- Christy Wampole(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 6 Etymology and Essence: The Primeval Power of Word Roots Etymologists, do not jump to conclusions! Do we not find two plants with quite separate roots sometimes mingling their foliage as one? FRANCIS PONGE, Méthodes As you have perhaps noticed, my study so far has made regular use of etymology in various ways. What is it I hope to show or accomplish by pointing out the occluded meanings found in the roots of words? While etymologies are often enlisted as incontrovertible proof of the latency of an idea or of the fact that we are mostly unaware of what we really mean when we speak or write, I can justify my “etymologizing method” by saying that for me, word roots are not particularly helpful as probative instruments but serve better as sites of the associative potential of words and concepts. If I invoke an etymology, it is not to suggest that I’ve discovered some primordial meaning hidden in the innermost kernel of a term but rather to show that forgotten roots sometimes give hints about why certain words evoke peripheral associations or to show that by recalling these roots, language can be poetically revitalized. My etymologizing gesture is only a secondhand gesture, the self-conscious reenactment of a practice that has for centuries served writers, philosophers, politicians, and theologians in Europe—and undoubtedly elsewhere—as a tool for convincing, justifying, legitimating, subverting, and playing. In twentieth-century Continental Europe, a century and a place that witnessed two world wars, atomic proliferation, ideological clashes, decolonization, and increasingly asymmetrical terrorist maneuvers, many believed that a higher truth could be had if we could simply return to the root of things, approximating ourselves with an essence that had been covered by obstructive and debilitating layers. Language became once again a primary site for root-seeking. Like thoughts, language is imagined as a kind of plant that sprouts from a root and must be tended to...
eBook - ePubHistory of English
A Resource Book for Students
- Dan McIntyre(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Open social networks are by definition more exposed to new linguistic forms than closed social networks, meaning that propagation is more likely to happen within the former than the latter. Propagation can happen for two main reasons. The first is that speakers may adopt a particular linguistic innovation as a result of assuming it to have high prestige. This is what Labov (2001) calls ‘change from above’. The second is that speakers may adopt a particular form simply because lots of other speakers are using it. This is what Labov (2001) calls ‘change from below’. C1 THE ROOTS OF ENGLISH In this unit we will investigate the relationship Old English has with the languages from which it has developed, as well as the nature of Old English as a language in its own right. Bear these origins in mind as you investigate the language in its later stages of development as they will sometimes help you to understand where a particular word, structure or pronunciation has come from. C1.1 Language family trees Unit A1 outlines the number of languages that influenced the development of Old English. Celtic, Latin and Scandinavian all had an effect, however big or small, on the expansion of the Germanic dialects of the Anglo-Saxon settlers. One common way of representing the development of languages is to use a family tree to show the various relationships that exist between them. Figure C1.1.1 is a simplified family tree in which the bold line shows the linguistic development of English. If you trace the line back you can see that it is a language of West Germanic descent, which itself derives from a language called Indo-European...
eBook - ePub- Peter S. Baker(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...The Viking age, which culminated in the reign of the Danish king Cnut in England, introduced a great many Danish words into English – but these were Germanic words as well. The conquest of England by a French-speaking people in the year 1066 eventually brought about immense changes in the vocabulary of English. During the Middle English period (and especially in the years 1250–1400) English borrowed some ten thousand words from French, and at the same time it was friendly to borrowings from Latin, Dutch and Flemish. Now relatively few Modern English words come from Old English; but the words that do survive are some of the most common in the language, including almost all the ‘grammar words’ (articles, pronouns, prepositions) and a great many words for everyday concepts. For example, the words in this paragraph that come to us from Old English (or are derived from Old English words) include those in table 1.1. Table 1.1 Some Modern English words from Old English 1.4 Old English dialects The language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons at the time of their migration to Britain was probably more or less uniform. Over time, however, Old English developed into four major dialects: Northumbrian, spoken north of the river Humber; Mercian, spoken in the Midlands; Kentish, spoken in Kent; and West Saxon, spoken in the south-west. All of these dialects have direct descendants in the English-speaking world, and American regional dialects also have their roots in the dialects of Old English. ‘Standard’ Modern English (if there is such a thing), or at least Modern English spelling, owes most to the Mercian dialect, since that was the dialect of London. Most Old English literature is not in the Mercian dialect, however, but in West Saxon, for from the time of King Alfred (reigned 871–99) until the Conquest Wessex dominated the rest of Anglo-Saxon England politically and culturally...
