Word Transformations
Every word has a family. Add the right prefix or suffix to a root word and you can turn a verb into a noun, an adjective into an adverb, or a word into its opposite. This is also called word formation — and once you know the patterns, you can guess the meaning of words you have never seen before.
Seven ways English makes new words
Word transformation is not one trick — English builds new words in several different ways. Here are the seven main ones.
Derivation is the one you will meet constantly — it is how one root word gives you an entire family of related words. The rest of this page focuses on it: the prefixes and suffixes that do the work.
Prefixes: they change the meaning
A prefix goes at the front of a word and usually changes what it means, without changing its part of speech.
Plus non-, en-/em-, de-, fore-, super-, semi-, mid- — the pattern is always the same: the prefix carries the meaning, the root stays a recognizable word.
Suffixes: they change the word class
A suffix goes at the end of a word. This is the part worth memorizing — the suffix usually tells you the part of speech before you even know the word.
Worked example — one root, a whole family
- -ion turns the verb into a noun naming the act or result: predict → prediction.
- -or turns the verb into a noun naming the person who does it: predict → predictor.
- -able turns the verb into an adjective meaning “can be…ed”: predict → predictable.
- -ly turns that adjective into an adverb: predictable → predictably.
Practice & score yourself
Eight sentences, one root word each. Type the correctly-formed word to complete the sentence, then check your answer.
The one rule to remember
A prefix usually changes a word’s meaning; a suffix usually changes its part of speech. Learn the dozen or so suffixes above, and you can guess the grammar of hundreds of unfamiliar words on sight — even before you know exactly what they mean.