Root Words for GRE Preperation
WORD ROOT
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORD ROOT
The following list presents some of the commonest word roots-mostly Greek and Latinthat appear in English. Learning to recognize these word roots is a great help in expanding your vocabulary. Many seeminglydifficultwords yield up their meanings easily when you recognize the word, roots that make them up. Excrescence, for example, contains the roots ex-, meaning out or out of, and meaning to grow; once you know this, the meaning of excrescence, an outgrowth (whether normal, such as hair, or abnormal, such as a wart) is easily deduced.
The list on Latin and Greek roots because these are the most frequently used to form compound words in English, and because they tend not to be self-explanatory to the average reader. Each entry gives the root in the most common form or forms in which it appears in English, with a very brief definition. (The definition does not cover all the shades of meaning of the given root, only the most important or the most broadly applicable.) The rest of the entry is a list of some of the common English words derived from this root; this list is only intended to provide a few examples of such words, and not even to come close to being exhaustive. Some words will naturally be found under more than one entry. The words themselves are not defined. We hope the Word Root List will encourage you to turn to the
Minidictionary or, better yet, to a good dictionary.
Builder
NOT, WITHOUT amoral, anarchy, anomalous, anonymous, aseptic, asexual, atheism, atrophy, averse
-
AB
FROM, AWAY, APART
.
abduct, abhor, -abject, abnormal, abrupt, absent, abuse
-. ..
ABLE,
CAPABLE OF, WORTHY OF changeable, durable, laudable, indubitable, inevitable, infallible, irreducible, tolerable, variable
AC, ACR
SHARP, SOUR acerbic, acetate, acid, acrid,
.
, I -
.
.,
--
acumen, acute
ACOU
HEARING acoustic AD, A
TO
(Often d is dropped and the first letter to
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORD ROOT
The following list presents some of the commonest word roots-mostly Greek and Latinthat appear in English. Learning to recognize these word roots is a great help in expanding your vocabulary. Many seeminglydifficultwords yield up their meanings easily when you recognize the word, roots that make them up. Excrescence, for example, contains the roots ex-, meaning out or out of, and meaning to grow; once you know this, the meaning of excrescence, an outgrowth (whether normal, such as hair, or abnormal, such as a wart) is easily deduced.
The list on Latin and Greek roots because these are the most frequently used to form compound words in English, and because they tend not to be self-explanatory to the average reader. Each entry gives the root in the most common form or forms in which it appears in English, with a very brief definition. (The definition does not cover all the shades of meaning of the given root, only the most important or the most broadly applicable.) The rest of the entry is a list of some of the common English words derived from this root; this list is only intended to provide a few examples of such words, and not even to come close to being exhaustive. Some words will naturally be found under more than one entry. The words themselves are not defined. We hope the Word Root List will encourage you to turn to the
Minidictionary or, better yet, to a good dictionary.
Builder
NOT, WITHOUT amoral, anarchy, anomalous, anonymous, aseptic, asexual, atheism, atrophy, averse
-
AB
FROM, AWAY, APART
.
abduct, abhor, -abject, abnormal, abrupt, absent, abuse
-. ..
ABLE,
CAPABLE OF, WORTHY OF changeable, durable, laudable, indubitable, inevitable, infallible, irreducible, tolerable, variable
AC, ACR
SHARP, SOUR acerbic, acetate, acid, acrid,
.
, I -
.
.,
--
acumen, acute
ACOU
HEARING acoustic AD, A
TO
(Often d is dropped and the first letter to