Word Meanings
Year 7 Vocabulary
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Contents
Learning new words
Prefixes and suffixes
Word stems
Connotations
Context
Class game
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Word meanings: Learning new words
Learning new words
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Learning new words
There are millions of words in the English language.
How can anyone learn
that many words? It
takes me ages to learn
even a few new words
and their meanings.
It is virtually impossible to learn every word in our language.
However, when you see a new word, it is often possible to
give an educated guess at its meaning because of certain
patterns and rules that are followed.
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Learning new words
A lot of long words can be broken down into smaller
segments. For example:
disadvantageous
dis-
advantage
-ous
e.g. disobey,
dissimilar, distasteful
e.g. beauteous,
mountainous, horrendous
prefix meaning ‘not’
suffix which creates an
adjective from a noun
Even though you may not know what a word means, you
may know the meanings or implications of the smaller
chunks and so can guess at its meaning.
What do you think ‘disadvantageous’ means?
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Word meanings: Prefixes and
suffixes
Prefixes and suffixes
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Prefixes
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Prefixes
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Suffixes
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Prefixes and suffixes
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Word meanings: Word stems
Word stems
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Stems/roots
Prefixes and suffixes are attached to the stem, or root, of
the word. The same root can often take many different
prefixes and suffixes and many have classical origins. This
means that some meanings are easier to guess than others.
scribe
population
What
dodo
you
think
the
What
you
think
scribble
(un)popular
Latinthe
‘-scrib-’
‘-script-’
Latinor
word
script
popularly
might mean?
‘populus’
means?
describe
populate(d)
What do you
description
popularity
think the English
prescribe
popularize
to write,
(the)
people
word ‘populous’
prescription
populist
writing
might mean?
subscribe
subscription
How many words can
you think of that contain
the stem ‘-dict-’ (‘say’)?
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Stems/roots
Other stems include these ones below.
Do you know what the words on the right mean?
Can you guess?
-port-
-tract-
-path-
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‘to carry’
deport, export,
import, report,
support, transport
‘to pull,
drag, draw’
attract, contract, detract,
extract, protract, retract,
traction, tractor
‘feeling,
suffering’
empathy,
sympathy, apathy,
psychopath
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Word meanings: Connotations
Connotations
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Connotations
Words do not just have meanings; they also have
connotations. Connotations are the ideas or feelings that
words evoke that may be in addition to their meanings.
For example, ‘rabbit’ and ‘bunny’
have identical meanings but ‘bunny’
might make you think of a smaller,
sweeter creature. It might also make
you think that the speaker is either a
young child or addressing one.
What connotations do these words have for you? (What
do they make you think of?)
winter
birth
smile
shiver
The connotations of a word form part of its meaning.
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Connotations
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Written and spoken language
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Degrees of meaning
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Word meanings: Context
Context
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Context
The exact meaning of a word is affected not only by its
connotations, but also by the context in which it is used.
For example, the words ‘big’ and ‘small’ can be used to
describe objects of different sizes, depending on what they
are referring to – a big wasp is still a lot smaller than a small
house, for example.
In other words, the exact meanings of the
words ‘big’ and ‘small’ are dependent on
their contexts (context-dependent).
Can you think of any other
words whose exact meanings
are context-dependent?
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Context
The meanings of many words are dependent on the
contexts in which they are found. Read the sentences below
and then define the highlighted word in two ways according
to the contexts it is in.
I think
I’dtalk
likefor
to
I can’t
Mrs Thomson
learn
the
longtosoplay
I’ll just
is going to be
organ…
be
brief…
I broke
a window
our exam
playing today.
football
monitor
yesterday.
My computer
My teacher
didn’t to
monitor
is going
Your
skindesign
is the
like
the
cost
nearly
£100
to
If you
click
on the
icon
largest
organ
in
brief
I wrote
for
fix after
Tom
spilt
in the
corner
of
your
your body.
Technology.
on it.bring
screen, juice
it should
up a window telling
you what
do.
Which other words can you think of that
have to
different
meanings in different contexts? Think particularly
about words that are specific to certain subjects.
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Word meanings: Class game
Class game
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Class game
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