Affixes: The Building Blocks of English | Hacker News Reader

Affixes: The Building Blocks of English

affixes.org

135 pointseverybodyknows15 comments

Some entries don't seem as exhaustive as others I've seen. For example, there are only 2 entries for "a-": a-1 is for Greek "without" and a-2 is presumably supposed to combine all the various Old English senses though it only mentions one (Wiktionary, for example, mentions 5: "up", "on", "with", "of", and one without etymology).

But even if we allow that mixture, we're definitely still missing the Latin ones:

ex- turning into a- (blame the French) is admittedly rare so might be out of scope.

ad- turning into a- however is extremely common and definitely should not be merged with the Old English derivations (even though "on" often takes a similar meaning). This is noted on the ad- page but it needs to be mentioned under a- too.

ab- turning into a- is less common due to only happening before a few letters, but is not even mentioned on the ab- page.

I hope you shared this comment on the site.

Not saying you're doing this, but I feel we've turned into a critical culture and not a supportive culture more and more. Criticism is not as helpful as people pitching in to help build.

There's another "a-" that might not qualify as an affix.

Words like askew, astride, aboard, atop, ... the list is actually quite long.

It could be added so that users of the site do not incorrectly analyze certain constructions.

This meaning is enumerated at

https://www.etymonline.com/word/a-

besides the homonymous prefixes of Greek and Latin origin.

Excellent! Cheers.

This is a truly wonderful rabbit hole and I've found myself browsing through these. The way they are described is very readily digestible.

The index of themes is a great starting point https://www.affixes.org/themes/index.html

For example https://www.affixes.org/alpha/c/calci-.html reading calci- about lime/calcium and ended up learning the origin of calculate and calculus!

Great old school content site. I bet they didn't even need a JavaScript framework.

I didn't see the rare English infix listed here: https://www.affixes.org/alpha/f/index.html

you mean the anglo-saxon one that connotes large, frightening, extraordinary, shocking, pleasurable or depressing?

Abso-f**ing-lutely

Wiktionary has quite comprehensive lists of those as well:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_prefixes

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_suffixes

If you're searching for a physical reference guide, I'd imagine "Word Clues" from middle school still holds up.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1616203.Word_Clues_Vocab...

Is there anything like this just for medical terminology?

I'd say it's almost a subset. In fact in the introduction it explicitly mentions medical terms as an inspiration. https://www.affixes.org/introduction.html

> It was in the summer of 1995, while my former business partner and I were studying the displays in a medical museum in order to advise how to improve them, that he remarked that one of the things needed to enhance visitors’ enjoyment would be an explanation of the mysteries of medical terminology: the difference, say, between an -itis and an -algia, or between words starting in haemo- and hepato-. That conversation stayed with me. Increased exposure to the complexities of technical language, and to the diversification of knowledge that has led to sub-disciplines such as palaeophytogeography and psychoneuroendocroimmunology, whose names pile element upon element, reinforced a belief that a concise work was needed that interpreted the main word-forming affixes in English.

Also the theme for medical and surgery terms https://www.affixes.org/themes/medsur.html

My father was a Classics professor, and one of the most popular classes he taught was "Latin Terminology for Medicine and Law".

Now we can learn the difference between “flammable” and “inflammable”.

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