This year we’ve covered Latin, Greek … and beyond with eponyms. You’ve seen infographics that get into assimilation rules and mnemonics. We’ve talked about prefixes (e.g.: pre-, re-, con-), stems (e.g.: ven, grad, sid), and variant forms (e.g.: fic, fect, fact). These episodes are all publicly archived and are worth studying a second or third time. We won’t remove anything here, so go ahead and bookmark them for future reference.
We kicked off the series with one of our favorite roots, phil: “love.” Philadelphia, for instance, is the city of brotherly love.
Like Philadelphia’s phil, many roots have a memorable—and often simple—word that you can use to remember the root.
- tract is to pull, like a tractor pulls a trailer
- mit is to send, like a radio transmits a signal
- fall is a trick, like in fallacy or false
- cis is to cut, like scissors “cutting” paper
- form means shape, just like the English form
- chron means “time,” just like chronometer, a keeper of “time” (just think of a watch!)
- graph is to write, as in paragraph
- ject is thrown, like a pilot who is ejected from his plane
- fer is carry, like a bus transfers people
- fact is make, like a factory which “makes” things
- bio is life, as in biography
- vert is to turn, as in inverted, or “turned” upside-down
- mal is bad or evil, as in malice
- cess is to go, as in kids “going” out to recess
- grad is to step, as in graduate to the next level
- -logy is to study, as in geology, biology, and psychology
- dict is to say: a dictionary says how to pronounce a word
- fin means end, as in final
- sens is to feel, as in the sensation of the warmth of fire
- port is to carry, like a porter who “carries” your luggage
Stayed tuned for the next 50, as we make our way toward the century mark, or 100th rootcast. Be sure to tell your friends and teachers about Membean!