Root Words, Prefixes and Suffixes
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Root Words, Prefixes and Suffixes
Most of the long, unfamiliar-looking words that appear in SSC, RRB and banking vocabulary sections are not really unfamiliar at all — they are built out of a small, recycled set of Latin and Greek building blocks. Once you know that "bene-" means "good," you can work out "benevolent," "benefactor," and "benediction" without ever having memorised those exact words, because each one simply combines "bene-" with a second familiar piece. This chapter is not another list of vocabulary words to memorise directly. Instead, it teaches you the roots, prefixes, and suffixes themselves, so that you can decode unfamiliar words on the spot, in the exam hall, without a dictionary. This single skill — breaking an unknown word into known pieces — is the most efficient vocabulary strategy available to a competitive exam candidate, because it multiplies a small amount of study into the ability to guess dozens of words correctly.
A quick note on terms before the lists. A root is the core unit that carries the main meaning of a word, usually derived from Latin or Greek. A prefix is attached to the front of a root or word to modify its meaning, often indicating negation, direction, number, or degree. A suffix is attached to the end of a word, and it usually changes the word's grammatical role — turning a verb into a noun, or an adjective into an adverb — while sometimes also adding shades of meaning. Recognising all three lets you take apart almost any long English word into meaningful pieces.
Common Prefixes and Their Meanings
| Prefix | Meaning | Example words |
|---|---|---|
| a-, an- | not, without | amoral, atypical, anarchy, anonymous |
| ante- | before | antenatal, anteroom, antecedent |
| anti- | against | antibiotic, antisocial, antidote |
| auto- | self | autobiography, automatic, autonomy |
| bi- | two | bicycle, bilingual, bisect |
| circum- | around | circumference, circumvent, circumnavigate |
| co-, com-, con- | together, with | cooperate, combine, connect |
| contra-, counter- | against, opposite | contradict, counterattack, contrary |
| de- | down, away, reverse | descend, deforest, devalue |
| dis- | not, opposite of, apart | disagree, dishonest, dismiss |
| ex- | out of, former | exit, extract, ex-president |
| extra- | beyond, outside | extraordinary, extracurricular |
| hyper- | over, excessive | hyperactive, hypersensitive |
| hypo- | under, less than normal | hypothermia, hypotension |
| il-, im-, in-, ir- | not | illegal, impossible, incomplete, irregular |
| inter- | between, among | international, interact, interrupt |
| intra- | within | intramural, intravenous |
| mal- | bad, poorly | malfunction, malnutrition, malpractice |
| mis- | wrongly | misunderstand, misplace, mislead |
| mono- | one, single | monologue, monopoly, monotone |
| multi- | many | multipurpose, multinational, multicultural |
| non- | not | nonsense, nonexistent, nonstop |
| omni- | all | omnipresent, omniscient, omnivore |
| over- | too much, above | overeat, overconfident, overtake |
| poly- | many | polygon, polytechnic, polygamy |
| post- | after | postpone, postgraduate, postscript |
| pre- | before | predict, prevent, preview |
| pro- | forward, in favour of | proceed, progress, promote |
| re- | again, back | rewrite, return, rebuild |
| semi- | half | semicircle, semifinal, semiconscious |
| sub- | under, below | submarine, subordinate, substandard |
| super- | above, beyond | superhuman, supervise, superimpose |
| trans- | across, beyond | transport, transform, transatlantic |
| un- | not, reverse of | unhappy, unlock, unfair |
| uni- | one | uniform, unicycle, unite |
Common Suffixes and Their Meanings
| Suffix | Meaning / Function | Example words |
|---|---|---|
| -able, -ible | capable of, able to be | readable, flexible, comfortable |
| -al | relating to (forms adjectives) | national, personal, cultural |
| -ance, -ence | state or quality of (forms nouns) | importance, patience, dependence |
| -ate | to make, to become (forms verbs) | activate, motivate, dominate |
| -dom | state, condition, domain | freedom, kingdom, boredom |
| -er, -or | one who does an action | teacher, writer, actor, sailor |
| -ful | full of | hopeful, careful, joyful |
| -hood | state or period of | childhood, neighbourhood, brotherhood |
| -ify, -fy | to make, to cause to become | simplify, clarify, beautify |
| -ish | somewhat, having the quality of | reddish, childish, selfish |
| -ism | a belief, practice, or condition | heroism, criticism, tourism |
| -ist | one who practises or believes in | scientist, artist, novelist |
| -ity, -ty | state or quality of (forms nouns) | equality, honesty, curiosity |
| -ive | having the nature of (forms adjectives) | creative, active, defensive |
| -less | without | hopeless, careless, fearless |
| -ly | in the manner of (forms adverbs) | quickly, carefully, honestly |
| -ment | result or action of (forms nouns) | agreement, movement, government |
| -ness | state or quality of (forms nouns) | happiness, kindness, darkness |
| -ous, -ious | full of, having the quality of | dangerous, ambitious, courageous |
| -ship | state, condition, or skill | friendship, leadership, hardship |
| -tion, -sion | action or state of (forms nouns) | education, decision, celebration |
High-Value Latin and Greek Roots
- Aud (Latin: to hear) — audience, audible, auditorium: An audience gathered in the auditorium to hear the speech, since the sound was clearly audible even from the back rows.
- Bene (Latin: good, well) — benefit, benevolent, benediction: The charity's benevolent founder offered a benediction before distributing the benefits of the harvest to the villagers.
- Bio (Greek: life) — biology, biography, antibiotic: Her biology teacher wrote a biography of a scientist who discovered an important antibiotic.
- Chron (Greek: time) — chronology, chronic, synchronise: The chronology of events showed that his chronic illness began after the doctors failed to synchronise the treatment properly.
- Dict (Latin: to speak) — dictionary, predict, contradict: You do not need a dictionary to predict that his statement will contradict what he said yesterday.
- Duc, duct (Latin: to lead) — conduct, educate, introduce: The teacher's job is to educate and introduce new ideas, while also learning to conduct the classroom well.
- Fac, fact (Latin: to make or do) — factory, manufacture, benefactor: The factory can manufacture thousands of units a day thanks to funding from a generous benefactor.
- Geo (Greek: earth) — geography, geology, geometry: Her geography project used geology to explain rock formation and geometry to measure the terrain.
- Graph (Greek: to write) — biography, photograph, autograph: He kept a photograph and an autograph from the celebrity whose biography he had just finished reading.
- Ject (Latin: to throw) — reject, inject, project: The committee decided to reject the proposal to inject more funds into the ambitious new project.
- Log, logue (Greek: word, study) — dialogue, biology, monologue: The play's opening monologue turned into a long dialogue about the biology of the human body.
- Manu (Latin: hand) — manual, manufacture, manuscript: The factory switched from manual labour to machines when it began to manufacture the printed version of the old manuscript.
- Mit, mis (Latin: to send) — transmit, permit, dismiss: The officer would not permit the letter to transmit until the clerk agreed to dismiss the earlier draft.
- Path (Greek: feeling, suffering) — sympathy, apathy, empathy: Unlike the apathy shown by the crowd, the doctor's genuine empathy and sympathy comforted the grieving family.
- Phon (Greek: sound) — telephone, symphony, microphone: The orchestra's symphony was broadcast over the telephone lines through a specially placed microphone.
- Port (Latin: to carry) — transport, export, portable: The company decided to export its portable devices using a new transport network.
- Scrib, script (Latin: to write) — describe, manuscript, inscription: The old manuscript contained an inscription that historians struggled to describe accurately.
- Spect (Latin: to look) — inspect, respect, spectator: Every spectator watched with respect as the officer began to inspect the parade.
- Tele (Greek: far) — television, telephone, telescope: He used a telescope to view distant stars, much as a telephone or television carries signals across great distances.
- Vid, vis (Latin: to see) — visible, television, supervise: The manager could supervise the entire floor because the security cameras made every corner visible on the television monitors.
- Voc, vok (Latin: to call, voice) — vocal, invoke, vocabulary: A strong vocabulary and a confident vocal delivery helped her invoke the sympathy of the judges.
Putting Roots, Prefixes and Suffixes Together
The real exam skill is combining these three pieces to decode a word you have never seen before. Take the word "incomprehensible." Break it apart: "in-" is a prefix meaning "not," "com-" is a prefix meaning "together" or an intensifier, "prehens" is a Latin root meaning "to grasp or seize" (related to the more familiar "comprehend"), and "-ible" is a suffix meaning "able to be." Put together, the word literally means "not able to be grasped" — which lines up exactly with its actual meaning, "impossible to understand." A candidate who has never encountered "incomprehensible" before, but who recognises "in-," "com-," "prehens" (from "comprehend"), and "-ible," can work out its meaning with high confidence purely from the pieces.
Try the same method on "malnourished": "mal-" means "bad," and "nourish" means "to feed and sustain," so the word means "badly fed" — exactly right. Or "circumnavigate": "circum-" means "around," and "navigate" means "to travel or find a way," so the word means "to travel all the way around" something, as in circumnavigating the globe. This decoding method will not work for every single word in English, since some words resist a clean breakdown, but it works often enough that practising it deliberately — pausing on an unfamiliar word and asking "what prefix, root, or suffix do I recognise here?" — measurably improves your ability to guess correctly under exam time pressure.
Recognising Prefixes Versus Roots That Merely Look Similar
A word of caution before you start applying this method aggressively: not every letter sequence that resembles a known prefix or root is actually functioning as one. "Interest" contains the letters "inter-," which might tempt you to read it as "inter-" plus "est," but "interest" is not built compositionally from the "between" prefix in any way that helps you guess its meaning — it comes from a separate Latin verb "interesse," meaning "to be important" or "to concern," and the resemblance to "inter-" is coincidental for practical decoding purposes. Similarly, "carpet" is not related to the "port/carry" root despite containing similar letters, and "mission" is not built from "miss" in the everyday sense of "to fail to hit," even though both trace back to the same deeper Latin root "mittere," to send. The decoding method is a powerful heuristic, not an infallible rule, and the best way to avoid being misled by coincidental letter overlaps is simply wide reading — the more real words you encounter using a given root correctly, the more reliably you will recognise genuine instances of it versus false matches.
Word-Building Practice: One Root, Many Words
A single root can generate an entire family of words once combined with different prefixes and suffixes, and recognising the family as a group is often more efficient than memorising each word separately. Consider the root "spect," meaning "to look": add "in-" to get "inspect" (to look into closely), add "retro-" to get "retrospect" (to look back), add "pro-" to get "prospect" (a look forward, an opportunity), add "sus-" (a form of "sub-") to get "suspect" (to look at with doubt), and add "-acle" to get "spectacle" (something worth looking at). Five distinct, exam-relevant words, all built from one three-letter root, once you notice the pattern. The same works for "port," meaning "to carry": import, export, transport, support, portable, and report all share this root, with the prefix determining the direction or nature of the carrying — "im-" (into), "ex-" (out), "trans-" (across), "sup-" (a form of "sub-," meaning to carry from underneath, hence to hold up), and "re-" (back, as in carrying back information).
This family-based approach to learning vocabulary is considerably more efficient than treating each new word as an isolated item to memorise from scratch. Whenever you learn a genuinely new root in your exam preparation, take thirty seconds to brainstorm every word you already know that contains it — you will usually find you already know three or four words built on the same root without having noticed the shared pattern before.
Number and Quantity Roots and Prefixes
A separate cluster of prefixes and roots deals specifically with numbers, and these appear constantly in words describing shapes, groups, and periods of time, making them especially useful for quantitative-reasoning-adjacent vocabulary as well as pure vocabulary questions.
| Prefix/root | Number meaning | Example words |
|---|---|---|
| uni- | one | unicycle, unanimous, unilateral |
| mono- | one | monopoly, monologue, monotonous |
| bi-, di- | two | bicycle, dioxide, bilateral |
| tri- | three | triangle, tricycle, trilogy |
| quad-, tetra- | four | quadrilateral, quadruple, tetrahedron |
| penta-, quin- | five | pentagon, pentathlon, quintuplet |
| hex-, sex- | six | hexagon, sextet |
| hept-, sept- | seven | heptagon, September (originally the seventh month) |
| oct- | eight | octagon, octopus, October |
| dec- | ten | decade, decimal, December |
| cent- | hundred | century, centimetre, percentage |
| mill- | thousand | millennium, millimetre, millipede |
Notice the historical curiosity in this table: "September," "October," "November," and "December" originally meant "seventh month," "eighth month," "ninth month," and "tenth month" respectively in the old Roman calendar, before two extra months were added to the start of the year and the names stopped matching their position. This is exactly the kind of etymological detail that occasionally turns up as a general-knowledge trivia question alongside pure vocabulary testing, and it is a useful hook for remembering "sept-," "oct-," and "dec-" as number prefixes.
More Root Words Worth Knowing
- Cred (Latin: to believe) — credible, incredible, credit: His story was so incredible that the bank refused to extend him any further credit until it became more credible.
- Cur, curr (Latin: to run) — current, occur, recur: If this problem continues to occur and recur, it may affect the current schedule.
- Fer (Latin: to carry, bear) — transfer, refer, offer: Please refer this file to accounts and offer to transfer the balance before Friday.
- Flect, flex (Latin: to bend) — reflect, flexible, deflect: A flexible plan allowed the team to reflect on setbacks and deflect unnecessary criticism.
- Form (Latin: shape) — reform, transform, uniform: The new policy aims to reform and transform the outdated uniform regulations.
- Gen (Latin/Greek: birth, origin) — generate, genetic, generation: Each new generation inherits genetic traits that help generate the next stage of evolution.
- Grad, gress (Latin: to step, go) — progress, graduate, regress: After years of steady progress, she was proud to graduate, though the economy seemed to regress that same year.
- Ject (Latin: to throw) — see the earlier list; also compare "eject" and "subject."
- Jud, jur (Latin: law, to swear) — judge, jury, jurisdiction: The judge instructed the jury within the court's jurisdiction.
- Loc (Latin: place) — location, local, dislocate: The accident caused him to dislocate his shoulder at a local clinic near his new location.
- Luc, lum (Latin: light) — illuminate, lucid, translucent: The translucent curtain allowed enough light to illuminate the room and gave a lucid view of the garden.
- Mort (Latin: death) — mortal, immortal, mortality: Ancient poets often wrote about the mortal fear of death and the wish for immortality, reflecting on human mortality.
- Nov (Latin: new) — novel, innovate, renovate: The company decided to innovate its product line and renovate its offices, launching each change like a novel idea.
- Rupt (Latin: to break) — interrupt, disrupt, bankrupt: The strike began to disrupt production and interrupt deliveries, eventually pushing the smaller supplier towards bankrupt status.
- Sect (Latin: to cut) — dissect, intersect, bisect: The surgeon had to dissect the tissue carefully where the two blood vessels intersect and bisect the organ.
- Sequ, secu (Latin: to follow) — sequence, consequence, subsequent: Every action has a consequence, and the subsequent sequence of events proved this clearly.
- Serv (Latin: to save, keep, serve) — conserve, preserve, observe: Wildlife officers work to conserve and preserve the forest, and they observe animal populations closely.
- Solv, solu (Latin: to loosen, solve) — resolve, solution, dissolve: The chemist watched the powder dissolve completely, forming a clear solution that helped resolve the experiment's earlier problem.
- Struct (Latin: to build) — construct, instruct, destruct: Engineers must construct the bridge exactly as the manual instructs, or the design could self-destruct under load.
- Ven, vent (Latin: to come) — convene, prevent, invention: The board decided to convene early to prevent any delay in reviewing the new invention.
Frequently Tested Prefix Pairs — Opposite Meanings
Exam papers sometimes test prefixes directly by asking which prefix correctly negates or reverses a given word, so it helps to know which negative prefix pairs with which type of root. Words of clearly Latin origin usually take "in-," "im-," "il-," or "ir-" (as in "inaccurate," "impossible," "illegal," "irregular"), where the exact form is chosen based on the first letter of the root that follows — "im-" before "p," "b," or "m," "il-" before "l," and "ir-" before "r," a pattern borrowed from Latin pronunciation rules. Words that already feel more native or everyday in English generally take "un-" instead (as in "unhappy," "unfair," "unlock"). Words describing an action that can be reversed or undone often take "dis-" (as in "disconnect," "disagree," "disqualify"). There is no perfect rule that predicts which prefix a given word will take — this, again, is largely a matter of established usage that must be learned through exposure — but noticing the general tendency reduces the number of plausible wrong guesses you have to choose between in a multiple-choice question.
Quick Test Yourself
- What does the prefix "omni-" mean, as in "omnipresent"? (a) many (b) all (c) none (d) some
Answer: (b) all - Break down "circumnavigate." What does "circum-" mean? (a) across (b) under (c) around (d) beyond
Answer: (c) around - Which root means "to hear," as found in "audible" and "auditorium"? (a) vis (b) aud (c) phon (d) dict
Answer: (b) aud - What is the meaning of the suffix "-less," as in "fearless"? (a) full of (b) without (c) capable of (d) relating to
Answer: (b) without - Which prefix correctly negates "legal" to mean "not legal"? (a) un- (b) dis- (c) il- (d) non-
Answer: (c) il- - The root "port" means "to carry." Which word does NOT belong to this root family? (a) transport (b) portable (c) reporter (d) portion
Answer: (d) portion — "portion" comes from an unrelated Latin root meaning "a share or part," while "transport," "portable," and "reporter" all build on the "carry" root. - What does the root "bio" mean, as in "biology" and "biography"? (a) earth (b) time (c) life (d) word
Answer: (c) life - Which suffix turns a verb into a noun meaning "the action or result of," as in "agreement" or "movement"? (a) -ness (b) -ment (c) -ship (d) -hood
Answer: (b) -ment - Decode "malnourished" using its prefix and root. What does it literally mean? (a) well fed (b) badly fed (c) never fed (d) over fed
Answer: (b) badly fed - Which prefix means "before," as in "predict" and "prevent"? (a) post- (b) pre- (c) pro- (d) peri-
Answer: (b) pre- - Break down "pentagon" using the number-prefix table. How many sides does it have? (a) four (b) five (c) six (d) seven
Answer: (b) five - Which root means "to break," as in "interrupt" and "disrupt"? (a) rupt (b) sect (c) solv (d) struct
Answer: (a) rupt - What does the suffix "-ify" mean, as in "simplify" and "clarify"? (a) full of (b) to make or cause to become (c) without (d) one who does
Answer: (b) to make or cause to become
These questions test recall of the exact prefix, root, and suffix tables above, but the real payoff comes when you apply the same decoding process to a completely new word you encounter later, whether in a mock test, a newspaper editorial, or the exam itself. Every time you correctly work out an unfamiliar word from its parts, you are reinforcing the method itself, not just memorising one more isolated vocabulary item — and that method will keep paying off long after this chapter's specific word list has faded from memory.