Word formation (Part 2)

Hello everyone!

How’s December treating you? In the last post we started taking a look at word formation and we had some nouns to form, how did you manage? Let’s take a look!

1. Recommend – Recommendation
2. Create – Creator, creation
3. Protective – Protector, protection
4. Aggressive – Aggression / aggressor
5. Train – Trainer, training
6. Educate – Education / educator
7. Complete – Completion
8. Agree – Agreement
9. Continue – Continuation / continuity
10. Reliable – Reliability

Today we’re taking a look at the formation of adjectives. For that we need to think about the following suffixes: -ing, -ed, -ive, -ful, -less, -able, -ible, -ic, -al, -ful, -less.

But we’ll also need to use negative prefixes, such as im-, un-, in-, il-, ir- , dis- or mis-.

Depending on the word we are forming the adjective from we’ll use one suffix or another. Take a look at the following examples:

• If we want to form an adjective from a noun we can use the following suffixes:

Poison → poisonous

Ambition → Ambitious

Pain → painful / painless

Moment → momentary

Magic → magical

• If we are forming an adjective from a verb we can use:

Remark → remarkable

Access → accessible

Resist → resistant 

Attract → attractive

Surprise → surprising / surprised

 

Regarding prefixes, there aren’t many rules in English but we can use the following when we want to form the opposite of an adjective:

• il- if the adjective starts wih “l”. For example: legal → illegal
• im- if the adjective starts with “m” or “p”. For example: mature → immature , patient → impatient
• ir- if the adjective starts with “r”. For example: regular → irregular

Note that there are exceptions to these rules! For example: loyal → disloyal

Amongst the negative prefixes above there’s one that has a slightly different meaning. Compare the following words and their meanings:

disappear: not appear

immature: not mature

misspell: spell something incorrectly

misunderstand: understand something incorrectly

Remember! When we add the prefix “mis-“ we are saying we’ve done something incorrectly, not that we haven’t done it!

 

Now, let’s practise!

Form as many adjectives as possible from the following words:

1. Amuse
2. Amaze
3. Flex
4. Possess
5. Practice
6. Magic
7. Danger
8. Honor
9. Accident
10. Success

 

Try to avoid checking a dictionary! We’ll see the answers in our next, very special, post!

Happy December! 🙂