The Cleverly Devised Poetical Dictionary of Prefixes and Suffixes

In my continuing efforts to expand my “vocabuverse” below is my recent attempt to poeticize the meanings of various prefixes and eventually suffixes. You know, the little words that make bigger words mean something more than what they originally did?

I guess you could call this my own special form of “paratuition” or “dyseducation”.

This is a work in progress (in the same way that my Cleverly Devised Poetical Dictionary of Difficult Words is a “work in progress”) so you’ll have to come back in a few months to see if I’ve “progressed” any further!

Here goes…



PREFIXES & SUFFIXES

A PREFIX is a little word
or “AFFIX” it is said
added to a bigger word
to make another word instead

But if you like you can AFFIX
a small word at the end
this is called a SUFFIX which
can change the meaning once again…





ABNORMAL

If you want a clever way
to say something’s abnormal
then insert PARA- at the start
as in paranormal
Otherwise you could indeed
put DYS- in PARA’S place
and change the face of “functional”
by having DYS- emplaced.



ABNORMALITY

In the case of abnormality
TERAT- or TERATO-
will fit quite nicely at the start
where a prefix usually goes



ABOUT

To add the essence of “about”
the prefix is PERI-
as in pericarp or periderm
or perinatology



ABOVE

EPI-, HYPER-, SUR- and TRANS-
and even the word SUPER-
denote the idea of above
along with the word SUPRA



ACCELERATION

Acceleration is a notion that
can be easily
infused into a word with TACH-
TACHEO- or TACHY-



ACROSS

The concept of “across” can be
incorporated by
DIA- as in “diadem”
or TRANS- as in “transcribe”



ACT (in place of)

If something is to act in place
of something or someone
put in PRO- before the word
and your job is done.



ADDITIONAL

to give a word the nuance
of “additional”
simply add the word EPI-
as in epicontinental



AFTER

If a thing is “after” then
add POST- or EPI-
as can be seen in postmodern
or epistemology



By Kerin Gedge
Copyright November 4, 2012


Coming soon in a rhyme near you:

Again = ana-, re-

Against = anti-, contra-, counter-, ob-

Air= aer-. Aero-, atmo-, pneum-, pneumo-, pneumato-

Algae = phyco-

All = omni-, pan-, panto-

Almost or apparentyly but not really = quasi

Among = epi-, inter-

Ancient = aerchaeo-, palaeo-

Angle = clin-, clino-

Animal = zo, zoo-, theri- therio-

Ant = myrmec-, myrmeco-

Anti clockwise = laev-, laevo-, levo-

Anus = proct-, procto-

Apart = dia-

Around = amph-, amphi-, circum-, epi-, peri-

Arrangement = tax-, taxo-,

Attraction to = phil-

Auxiliary = para-

Away = cata-
Away from = ap-, apo, ec-, ex-