--- title: Building words: prefixes, suffixes and compounds — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Building words: prefixes, suffixes and compounds», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Long words are often built from smaller parts, like a train made of carriages: a root in the middle, a prefix hooked on --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Building words: prefixes, suffixes and… # Building words: prefixes, suffixes and compounds Lesson 37 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/0/) — Long words are often built from smaller parts, like a train made of carriages: a root in the middle, a prefix hooked on the front and a suffix hooked on the back. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/1/) — Ruby's teacher writes "unhappiness" on the board; Ruby spots three carriages: "un-" (not), "happy" (the root, with its y turned to i) and "-ness" (which turns it into a naming word). - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/2/) — English also glues whole words together, "book" + "keeper" = "bookkeeper", and blends bits of words, "hungry" + "angry" = "hangry", the grumpy feeling right before lunch. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/4/) — Knowing the parts lets you crack new words like a code, but not every combination is a real word, so check new ones in a dictionary. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/5/) — A root is the main part of a word, a prefix is added to the start and a suffix to the end: "un" + "happy" + "ness" makes "unhappiness". - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/6/) — Some prefixes and their meanings: re- (again), un- (not, or undo), dis- (not, or the opposite), pre- (before), mis- (wrongly). - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/7/) — The suffix "-ful" means full of and "-less" means without: hopeful and hopeless, careful and careless; "-ful" is spelled with one l. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/8/) — A blend joins parts of two words: brunch (breakfast + lunch), smog (smoke + fog), motel (motor + hotel) and hangry (hungry + angry), which is now in major dictionaries. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/9/) — "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", from the 1964 film Mary Poppins, has 34 letters and means wonderful; it is a made-up word, and many of the longest dictionary words are technical ones. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/10/) — A compound word is two words joined into one; "bookkeeper" (book + keeper) has three double letters in a row: oo, kk, ee. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/11/) — Back-formation means making a new word by chopping off what looks like an ending: "burgle" was made from "burglar", and "edit" from "editor". - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/12/) — "-ish" is an old English suffix meaning somewhat, as in childish and reddish; today people also say "7-ish" and even answer just "Ish." - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/13/) — "Hamburger" comes from Hamburg, a city in Germany, not from ham; people split it into "ham" + "burger" and then made "cheeseburger" and "veggie burger". - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/14/) — "Dead" as a booster meaning very ("dead good") is common in Liverpool and much of northern England; in Leicester and the East Midlands "me duck" is a friendly word, like love or dear. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/37-building-words-prefixes-suffixes-and-compounds/15/) — "Selfie" is "self" plus the friendly ending "-ie", a favourite in Australian English (brekkie for breakfast, barbie for barbecue); it was Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year in 2013. - ← previous: [Grammar puzzles, part two](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/36-grammar-puzzles-part-two/) - next →: [Words that changed their meaning](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/38-words-that-changed-their-meaning/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)