All About Roots

An estimated 60% of all English words come from Greek and Latin roots, and that's not even counting roots from languages like French, Spanish, Italian, German, or Afrikaans!

When you can see the spelling of the word, you can often break it down to come up with the correct answer choice in vocabulary rounds. Scripps is also known to select roots-based words for vocabulary rounds.

This week, you'll focus on this crucial skill. We will go over important roots, affixes, root words, and the ways that they are used. You will learn how to break words down, put them back together, and also how to confirm whether roots are present within a word or not.

In this lesson, you'll learn some important roots and affixes, plus a cool trick for spelling words with roots from Latin and Greek.

Here is a table of useful roots and affixes, their languages of origin, and their definitions. As you look through the examples, note that sometimes the root does not take on its literal meaning; instead, it might be taken figuratively, such as "ab-" meaning both away and outside of. Think: how does the root contribute to this word's meaning?

L = Latin    Gk = Greek

Latin and Greek have their own ways of connecting roots. When two roots, one ending with a consonant and one beginning with a consonant, are next to each other, we sometimes need a vowel to connect them.

Fortunately, there is an easy pattern: Latin-based words use "i," and Greek-based words use "o."

This is also why so many Greek roots end in "o," as we sometimes just add the "o" on beforehand.

Note how in this case, we need the connecting vowel because "cone" ends with a consonant sound. Also note how the silent "e" is dropped to add the letter "i." This will be a common pattern when adding suffixes or roots at the end of a word.