1.4 Latin Prefixes — Epoché
What you will be able to do Give the meaning of the ten prefixes ad con dē ex in per prae prō sub trāns . Say why a Latin prefix and a Latin preposition are the same word. Read an assimilated prefix — ad plus ferō giving afferō — and undo the assimilation to find the parts. Work out the meaning of an unfamiliar English word from prefix plus root. Read sentences like Quo eo? [18] — Where am I going? — without looking anything up. Prerequisites : 1.3 — the eight suffixes. A Latin prefix is not a piece of word-building machinery that exists only inside words. It is a preposition that has been stuck on the front. That single observation is worth a lot: it means the ten items in this lesson will come back in the Syntax volume as prepositions governing cases, and that what you learn here you learn twice over. What you already know Ten prefixes. Read down the third column and notice that you can supply the meaning of most of the English words without being told. Prefix Meaning English words ad- to, toward admit, adhere, advance, adjacent con- with, together; or just intensive connect, conspire, contain, confirm dē- down, away; or reversing descend, deduce, deface, dethrone ex- out of, from export, extract, exclude, exit in- in, into — or not include, inscribe / invisible, incredible per- through; thoroughly perforate, permit, persist, perfect prae- before, in front precede, predict, preface, premise prō- forward, for, on behalf of produce, promote, proceed, pronoun sub- under, beneath; slightly submit, subscribe, submerge, suburb trāns- across, beyond transfer, transmit, translate, transparent Ten prefixes against the eight verb roots of lesson 1.2 gives eighty combinations, and English has taken perhaps sixty of them. That is the arithmetic behind the claim in lesson 1.1 that you own thousands of Latin words: you own them in combinations, not one at a time. The rule Three rules, of which the third is the one that actually needs teaching. First: the prefix is the preposition. Every item in the table above is also a free-standing Latin preposition, with one exception ( con- , whose free form is cum ). So when the Syntax volume tells you that ad takes the accusative and dē takes the ablative, you will already know what the words mean. And going the other way, an English word tells you what a preposition means: if transparent is "showing through", then trāns is "across, through". Second: in- is two different prefixes. One is the preposition, meaning "in, into"; the other is a negative, cognate with English un- and Greek a- . They are spelled identically and you tell them apart by what they are attached to: on a verb, in- is nearly always the preposition ( include , inscribe , invade ); on an adjective, nearly always the negative ( invisible , incredible , infinite ). This is the commonest single ambiguity in Latin word-building and English inherited it whole: inflammable means the opposite of what most English speakers guess, which is why safety labels now say flammable instead. Third: prefixes assimilate. When a prefix ending in a consonant meets a root beginning with a different one, the two often merge. Latin wrote what it said, so the spelling changes: Parts Written as English word ad + ferō afferō afferent ad + capiō accipiō accept ad + grediō aggredior aggression con + legō colligō collect con + rumpō corrumpō corrupt in + lūmen illūminō illuminate in + mortālis immortālis immortal sub + ferō sufferō suffer ex + ferō efferō efferent trāns + dūcō trādūcō traduce The pattern is simple once stated: the final consonant of the prefix becomes the first consonant of the root, or drops. So a doubled consonant in the middle of a Latin word is very often the seam where a prefix was welded on, and English inherited the doubling: accept , aggression , collect , corrupt , illuminate , immortal . When you see a double letter in an English word of Latin origin, try splitting it and see whether a prefix appears. There is a small extra effect worth knowing, because it will trip you up in the Forms volume. Adding a prefix often weakens the vowel of the root: capiō becomes accipiō , faciō becomes efficiō , teneō becomes contineō . The root a goes to i in an unstressed syllable. English preserves the evidence in pairs like capture / accept , fact / efficient , tenant / continent . Reading an unfamiliar word Here is the mechanism at work on words you may never have parsed. Cover the third column. English word Parts Literally transcribe trāns + scrībō write across — copy from one place to another circumspect circum + spectum looked around — cautious preposterous prae + posterus before-behind — back to front subvert sub + vertō turn from underneath perspicuous per + spiciō able to be seen through — clear deference dē + ferō carrying down — yielding proceed prō + cēdō go forward adjacent ad + iaceō lying next to Preposterous is the one people enjoy. It is literally "front-rear", and it meant exactly that: the wrong way round. The English sense of "absurd" is a hundred-per-cent faithful translation of a Roman joke. And notice adjacent : here the i of iaceō is the consonantal i of lesson 0.1, which later editors wrote as j . That is why the English word has a j and why the older Latin spelling adjaceō is in your dictionary. Read it aloud Prefixed words, said the Latin way. The stress rule applies to the whole compound, not to the root, so it often lands on the seam. Latin Stress What to watch accipiō ac-CI-pi-ō hard c twice, and the cc is held colligō COL-li-gō penult light, so the stress retreats; hard g immortālis im-mor-TĀ-lis the mm is held; penult long trādūcō trā-DŪ-cō two long vowels in a row; hard c illūminō il-LŪ-mi-nō the ll is held; penult light, so it goes back to LŪ efferō EF-fe-rō penult light; the ff is held The held double consonant is the thing to work on here. English writes doubled letters without saying them: the cc of accept is a single sound. Latin says both. It is the audible mark of the seam,