“The 14 Words that Make
All the Difference”
Richard E. Hodges
Improving Spelling and Vocabulary in the Secondary School, published
by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communicatiion Skills and
the National Council of Teachers of English, 1982;
Denny Wayson
NATT(ms) MTA Satellite Program, 2002 Anne Arundel County Public Schools
TR11
The 102 basic Greek elements every
English speaker/reader should know for
an adequate understanding of thousands
of English words that are used in the
mass media (newspapers, magazines, TV,
radio, books, and the Internet).
We use Greek elements in
our vocabulary and speech
everyday!
Did you know that…..
prefixes, suffixes, and root
words…
come from Greek, Latin,
and Anglo-Saxon roots
Why do we care about
prefixes?
“If you were to examine the 20,000 most
used English words, you would find that
about 5,000 of them contain prefixes and
that 82 percent (about 4,100) of those
words use one of only fourteen different
prefixes out of all the available prefixes in
the language.”
As I was reading, The Odyssey,
clunk
chapter five page 44… I had a clunk…..
….”They
inwardly
left. I laughed inwardly
because my name and stratagem had
worked. But Cyclops, groaning and
weeping in pain, rolled away the stone
from the opening.”
What does inwardly mean in this
context? Why didn’t the Cyclopes hear
Odysseus laughing?
Taking a closer look at the word
inwardly
in * ward * ly
Prefix meaning:
into or not
Looking back at the clunk
inwardly
left. I laughed inwardly
because my name and stratagem had
worked. But Cyclops, groaning and
weeping in pain, rolled away the stone
from the opening.”
….”They
Oh, now I get it……he laughed to himself… in his
head. This is why Cyclopes didn’t hear him.
Now it makes sense.
Let’s look at another
example:
“O Cyclops, if anybody asks about that
unsightly eye you have there, just day
unsightly
that Odysseus, destroyer of cities,
son of Laertes, blinded you!” (page 47)
“Un-”
is a
prefix that
means not or
the opposite
un
unsightly
Closer look ….
un
unsightly
If something is
“sightly*,” then
it is pleasant to
see (to sight)
*not a real word
Okay, so I reread and…
“O Cyclops, if anybody asks about that
unsightly
unsightly eye you have there, just day
that Odysseus, destroyer of cities,
son of Laertes, blinded you!” (page 47)
Unsightly means not pleasant or pretty
to look at and this makes sense to me,
because the Cyclopes eye was burned
and poked out!
Word Development
Use Chapter 5 and 6 to locate words
that contain, “The 14 Words that
Make All the Difference,” the
following prefixes:
ab- (away from)
be- (on all sides, overly)
de- (reversal, undoing,
downward)
dis-, dif- (not, reversal)
ex- (out of, former)
pre- (before)
re- (again, restore)
un- (do the opposite of)
ad- (to, toward)
com-, con-, co- (with, together)
en-, em- (in, into, to cover or
contain)
in- (into, not)
pro- (in favor of, before)
sub- (under, beneath)