What’s the Fastest Way to Boost your English Vocabulary?

Learning a few Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes is a very quick way (probably THE fastest way) to learn a large number of related English words. (If you speak a language based on Latin, you already know many of these roots and prefixes. So you can concentrate on learning and using the English words derived from them. It’s still important to understand how the specific roots convert into English. That’s because each language does it a little differently—and the suffixes are often quite different.

Even when you don’t speak a Latin-based language, a small set of Latin roots and prefixes can give you the keys to understand the many English words made for them. To demonstrate, I designed a quick, free challenge showing over 400 English words made with 25 Latin roots and a handful of prefixes and suffixes.

You’ll already know several words from many of these roots. (Examples: introduce & reduce, dictator & prediction, inspection & perspective.) Once you know the root’s meaning and a few prefixes, it’s often easy to recognize or guess words you don’t know with the same root.

Here’s an example not included in the challenge. -Fer is an English word base from the Latin root ferre, which means ‘to bring.’ So confer & conference include the idea of ‘bringing together,’ refer & reference of ‘bringing something up again,’ and transfer of ‘bringing something across,’ from one person or group to another. To infer is to ‘bring in’ an idea that is not clearly stated. (Sherlock Holmes could draw inferences from small clues. For example, he often guessed people’s occupations or recent activities from their appearance. He used little details to ‘bring an idea into’ his thinking.)

You can find the challenge (“How Many Words From These Roots Do You Know?”) here: https://www.englishhints.com/english-words-with-latin-roots.html#take

Could you think of at least one or two words from each root? Which words surprised you? Are some words easier to recognize once you know the meaning of their roots? Let me know in the comments!

#wordroots #vocabulary #boostvocabulary