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Vocabulary: Suffixes and Prefixes
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The University of Alabama
Center for Academic Success
124 Osband
348-5175
What can you do when you run into a word
that you don’t know? One thing that may help is to analyze the word,
looking for groups of letters that have special meanings. A group of
letters with a special meaning appearing at the end of a word is
called a suffix. Here is a list of 16 important suffixes.
| Suffix |
Meaning |
Example
|
| -able |
able to
be |
manageable |
| -ible |
|
defensible |
| -al |
relating
to |
regal |
| -ance |
|
resistance |
| -ence |
|
independence |
| -ic |
|
heroic |
| -ion |
state
of |
union |
| -ism |
quality
of |
patriotism |
| -hood |
|
brotherhood |
| -ity |
|
legality |
| -ment |
|
puzzlement |
| -er |
one who |
writer |
| -or |
|
advisor |
| -ite |
|
Mennonite |
| -y |
full of |
soapy |
| -ful |
|
wishful |
When a group of letters having a special
meaning appears at the beginning of a word, we call that group of
letters a prefix. Following is a list of 10 prefixes all
dealing with counting.
| Prefix |
Meaning |
Example |
| uni- |
one |
unicycle |
| mono- |
one |
monologue |
| auto- |
self |
autobiography |
| duo- |
two |
duodecimal |
| bi- |
two |
bifocal |
| tri- |
three |
tripod |
| penta- |
five |
pentagon |
| hexa- |
six |
hexadecimal |
| poly- |
many |
polygon |
| multi- |
many |
multicolored |
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