Vocabulary: The Key to Meaning

• Joe and Rachel were both taking an English course.

Joe was doing well in the course, but Rachel was
not. In particular, Rachel was having trouble with the
vocabulary in the textbook. She complained, “I can’t
even pronounce some of these words, much less
know what they mean!. There are so many words I
don’t know that I can’t look them all up. And to
make things worse, the instructor uses these same
words on exams.”
• Rachel asked Joe if he were having the same
trouble, Joe agreed that there were many new and
difficult words, but he said he had worked out a way
of handling them. He figured out the meanings of
many words from the way they were used in a
sentence. He also used word parts to figure out
meanings. To pronounce hard words, he broke the
words into syllables. Then he used a dictionary to
check meanings or pronunciations of which he was
unsure.
• Joe has acquired a set of skills that are helping
him to handle the vocabulary in college
courses. These skills help him improve his
overall everyday vocabulary as well.
• Vocabulary development is a skill worth the effort to
improve. Your vocabulary affects not only your
reading skills, but your speaking, listening, and writing
skills as well. In speaking, the words you choose affect
how well you are understood, the impression you
make, and how people react to you. In writing, your
vocabulary determines how clearly and accurately
you can express your ideas to others. In listening,
your vocabulary influences how much you understand
in class lecture, speeches, and class discussions.
 RECOGNIZING THE STRUCTURE OF WORDS

USING WORD PARTS TO EXPAND YOUR VOCABULARY

• Many words in the English language are made
up of word parts called prefixes, roots, and
suffixes. These word parts have specific
meanings that, when added together, can help
you determine the meaning of the word as a
whole.
Suppose that you came across the following sentence in a human
anatomy textbook:
Trichromatic plates are used frequently in the text to illustrate the
position of body organs.

The word trichromatic can be divided into three parts, its prefix, root,
and suffix.
• Prefix – tri (“three”)
• Root – chrome (“color”)
• Suffix – atic (“characteristic of”)
You can see from this analysis that trichromatic means “having three
colors.”
Here are a few other examples of words that you can figure out by using
prefixes, roots, and suffixes.”
The parent thought the child was unteachable.
• un- = not
• teach = help someone learn
• -able = able to do something
unteachable = not able to be taught

The student was a nonconformist.

• non- = not
• conform = go along with others
• -ist = one who does something
nonconformist = someone who does not go along with others
Before you begin to use word parts to figure out new
words, there are a few things you need to know:
1. In most cases, a word is built upon at least one root.
2. Words can have more than one prefix, root, or suffix.
a. Words can be made up of two or more roots
(geo/logy).
b. Some words have two prefixes (in/sub/ordination).
c. Some words have two suffixes (beauty/ful/ly)
3. Words do not always have prefix and suffix.
a. Some words have neither a prefix nor a suffix
(read)
b. Others have a suffix but no prefix (read/ing)
c. Others have a prefix but no suffix (pre/read)
4. Roots may change in spelling as they are combined
with suffixes (root = aud/audit, meaning = hear, sample
word = audible)
5. Sometimes, you may identify a group of letters as a
prefix or root, but find that it does not carry the
meaning of the prefix or root. For example, in the word
internal, the letters inter should not be confused with
the prefix inter-, meaning “between.” Similarly, the
letters mis in the word missile are part of the root and
are not the prefix mis-, which means “wrong; bad.”
PREFIXES

Prefixes appear at the beginnings of many

English words. They alter the meaning of the
root to which they are connected.
ROOTS

Roots carry the basic or core meaning of a word.

Hundreds of root words are used to build words in the
English language. Knowledge of the meanings of
these roots will enable you to unlock the meanings of
many words. For example, if you know that the root
dic/dict means “tell or say,” then you would have a
clue to the meanings of such words as dictate (speak
for someone to write down), dictation (words spoken
to be written down), and diction (wording or manner
of speaking).
SUFFIXES

Suffixes are word endings that often change the

part of speech of a word. For example, adding
the suffix y to the noun cloud produces the
adjective cloudy. Accompanying the change in
part of speech is a shift in meaning. (Cloudy
means “resembling cloud; overcast with clouds,
dimmed or dulled as if clouds.”)
Huge, gigantic
enormous, giant,
big