A prefix is added to the beginning of a word to expand or change the word’s core meaning (its root or stem). The prefix non-, for instance, added to the root word toxic changes the meaning of the word from “poisonous” to “not poisonous.” The chart of common prefixes will help you become familiar the meanings of prefixes It also lists words in which you might encounter prefixes.
A suffix is a word ending that indicates a word’s part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and so on). Some languages, such as Chinese and southeastern Asian languages, use word order rather than suffixes to convey a word’s grammatical function; pay particular attention to suffixes if your native language doesn’t use them.
Consider the English noun democracy, for example, which has many related forms: democrat (a noun), democratize (a verb), democratic (an adjective), and democratically (an adverb). If you were to switch any of these two words in a sentence, your readers might become confused.
The chart of suffixes will help make you more aware of how a word’s suffix determines its part of speech.
Prefixes and their meanings
Suffixes and their parts of speech
Related topics:
Intensive and extensive language activities
Reading while listening
Using a dictionary or a thesaurus
Becoming familiar with the Academic Word List
Keeping a vocabulary notebook
Keeping an editing log
Targeting areas for improvement