Unit 5 · Word Power

Read these pairs: happy and unhappy, lock and unlock, fair and unfair. In each pair the second word starts with the same two letters, un. And in each pair, un turns the word around. Unhappy means not happy. Unlock means the opposite of lock. A word part that goes on the front of a word is called a prefix.

The word that the prefix sticks to is called the base word. Happy is the base word in unhappy. The base word can stand alone. The prefix cannot. Nobody walks around saying "un." But stick un onto a base word and it goes to work. It always means not or the opposite of.

This gives you a tool. When you meet a word that starts with un, cover the un with your finger. Read the base word. Then say "not" in front of it. Unsafe? Not safe. Unable? Not able. Unwrap? The opposite of wrap. You just read a word you may never have seen before.

Look at this sentence: "Dad had to reheat the soup because it got cold." What did he do? He heated it again. The prefix re means again or back. Redo means do again. Rewrite means write again. Return means turn back. Refill means fill again. When you see re at the start, try saying "again" after the base word.

Now this one: "The class took a pretest before the unit started." A pretest is a test you take before you learn the material. The prefix pre means before. Preheat the oven means heat it before you cook. A preview is a view of something before it comes out. Prepay means pay before you get the thing.

Be careful. Not every word that starts with re or pre has a prefix. Red is not re plus d. Press is not pre plus ss. The test is simple. Cover the letters. Is what is left a real base word that makes sense? Re plus heat works. Re plus d does not. If the base word is not real, there is no prefix there.

Here is a sentence from a class story: "Lena disagreed with the plan, so she spoke up." Disagree means the opposite of agree. The prefix dis means not or the opposite of, a lot like un. Dislike means not like. Disappear means the opposite of appear. Dishonest means not honest. Disconnect means the opposite of connect.

Now try this: "Tomas misspelled his own name on the test." He did not skip his name. He spelled it wrong. The prefix mis means wrong or badly. Misread means read wrong. Misplace means put in the wrong place. Misbehave means behave badly. A mistake is something done wrong.

Un, dis and mis all start words and all make the word go a different way. But they are not the same. Untie means the opposite of tie. Mistie is not a word. English picks one prefix for each base word, and you learn it by reading. When in doubt, think about the meaning. Wrong or badly? Mis. Not or opposite? Un or dis.

Read these two words: hopeful and hopeless. They share the base word hope. But one describes a kid who thinks the team will win. The other describes a kid who has given up. The difference is on the end. A word part added to the end of a base word is called a suffix. Ful and less are suffixes.

The suffix ful means full of. Hopeful means full of hope. Careful means full of care. Playful means full of play. Colorful means full of color. Notice that the suffix has one l, even though the word full has two. Hopeful. Careful. That is just how it is spelled.

The suffix less means without. Hopeless means without hope. Careless means without care. Fearless means without fear. Homeless means without a home. When you meet a long word that ends in ful or less, find the base word first. Then add "full of" or "without." Thoughtless? Without thought.

Look at this sentence: "The cat walked quietly across the roof." How did the cat walk? Quietly. The suffix ly is added to a describing word to tell how. Quick becomes quickly. Slow becomes slowly. Sad becomes sadly. If you can ask "how did they do it?" and the answer ends in ly, you have found the suffix.

Now this one: "The painter climbed the ladder." A painter is a person who paints. The suffix er can mean a person who does something. Teach becomes teacher. Sing becomes singer. Farm becomes farmer. Build becomes builder. The base word tells you what the person does.

But er has a second job. "My brother is taller than me." Taller does not mean a person who talls. Here er compares two things. Tall, taller. Fast, faster. Cold, colder. So when you see er, ask which job it is doing. Is it a person who does the base word? Or is it comparing two things? The sentence will tell you.

Read this: "We will act out the play." Now this: "Her action saved the day." Act is something you do. Action is a thing you can name and talk about. The suffix tion turns a doing word into a naming word. Protect becomes protection. Collect becomes collection. Direct becomes direction. Invent becomes invention.

The suffix tion sounds like "shun." It is one of the most common endings in English. Many of the big words in your science and social studies books end this way. Pollution. Population. Celebration. Education. When you see one, cover the tion. Look for the action hiding at the front. Educate. Celebrate. Pollute.

Sometimes the base word loses a letter or two before tion is added. Celebrate drops the e to make celebration. Educate drops the e to make education. That is normal. The base word is still there, just a little trimmed. And the meaning is the same: the act of doing that thing, or the thing that results.

Look at these words: telephone, telescope, television. They all start with tele. Tele is not a prefix like un. It is a root. A root is a word part from an old language, often Greek or Latin, that carries the main meaning. Tele comes from Greek and means far. A telephone carries sound from far away. A telescope lets you see far away.

Here is another root: graph. It comes from Greek and means write or draw. An autograph is your name written by yourself. A paragraph is a piece of writing. A photograph is a picture drawn with light. Even the word graph, a chart, is a drawing of numbers. Now look at telegraph. Tele plus graph. Writing sent far away.

Roots are different from base words. A base word like hope can stand alone. Most roots cannot. Nobody says "I have a tele." But roots show up in dozens of words. Learn one root and you get a clue for every word that holds it. The next lesson gives you three more.

A truck carries goods across the state line. When goods leave the country, we export them. When they come in, we import them. Both words hold the root port. Port comes from Latin and means carry. A portable speaker is one you can carry. A porter at a hotel carries your bags. Transport means carry across.

Now the root dict, from Latin, means say or speak. Predict means say before. A weather report predicts rain. It says rain is coming before it comes. A dictionary is a book of words we say. When a teacher dictates, she says words out loud for you to write. Contradict means say against.

The root aud means hear. An audience is a group that hears a show. Audio is sound you can hear. The auditorium is the big room where people sit and listen. Something audible is loud enough to hear. Three roots, dozens of words. Carry, say, hear. Keep them handy.

Sam wants to write the word unnecessary. He is not sure how many n’s it has. Then he stops and takes it apart. Un plus necessary. The prefix un ends in n. The base word necessary starts with n. So the word needs both. Unnecessary, two n’s. He did not have to memorize it. The parts told him.

This works because word parts keep their spelling when they join. Mis plus spell is misspell, two s’s. Dis plus appear is disappear, one s and two p’s. Re plus enter is reenter, two e’s. Hope plus ful is hopeful. Care plus less is careless. Write each piece, then push them together.

Two small changes are worth knowing. When a base word ends in y, the y often turns to i before a suffix. Happy plus ness is happiness. Easy plus ly is easily. When a base word ends in a silent e, keep the e before a suffix that starts with a consonant: safe plus ly is safely. Drop the e before a suffix that starts with a vowel: bake plus er is baker.

Take the base word help. Add ful and you get helpful. Add less and you get helpless. Add er and you get helper. Add un in front of helpful and you get unhelpful. One base word, four new words, and you know what every one of them means. Word parts are like blocks. Snap them together and something new appears.

Some words stack more than one part. Unbelievable is un plus believe plus able. Disrespectfully is dis plus respect plus ful plus ly. Start from the middle. Find the base word or root. Then read outward, one part at a time. Long words stop being scary when you know they are just short parts in a row.

Many classrooms keep a word part wall. It is a chart with the prefixes on one side, the suffixes on the other and the roots in the middle. Each part has its meaning and one example word. When a new long word shows up in a book, students check the wall. Make your own on a page in your notebook. Add a part every time you learn one. By the end of the year it will be a map to thousands of words.

Read this: "The hikers reached the summit, the very top of the mountain, just before noon." You may not know summit. But look at what comes right after it, set off by commas. The very top of the mountain. The writer defined the word for you inside the sentence. Any hint in the words around a hard word is called a context clue. This one is a definition clue.

Definition clues often hide behind small signals. Commas, like the sentence above. The word is, as in "A canine is a dog." The words which means or that is. Or a dash. Writers of science and social studies books do this all the time. They know you will meet new words, so they explain them on the spot.

Here is the habit. When a word stops you, do not freeze. Read to the end of the sentence. Then read the sentence before it and the one after. Ask, did the writer tell me what this means? Very often the answer is yes. The definition is sitting right there, waiting for you to notice it.

Try this: "Grandma keeps many condiments on the table, such as ketchup, mustard and hot sauce." Condiments is a strange word. But the sentence gives three examples. Ketchup, mustard, hot sauce. What do those have in common? They are things you add to food for flavor. So condiments must mean that. You figured out the group from the samples.

Example clues come with their own signals. Such as. For example. Like. Including. When you see those words after a hard word, the writer is about to show you samples. Read the samples. Ask what they share. That shared thing is the meaning.

Here is one more. "The zoo has several reptiles, including snakes, turtles and lizards." Even if reptiles is new, you know snakes, turtles and lizards. Scaly animals that lay eggs. That is close enough to keep reading. Context clues do not always give you the perfect dictionary meaning. They give you enough to understand the sentence, and that is the goal.

Read this: "The room was tidy. Everything was neat and in its place." You may not know tidy. But the next sentence says neat. Neat is a word that means about the same thing. A word that means the same or almost the same as another word is a synonym. Writers often set a synonym right next to a hard word. Big and huge. Fast and quick. Tidy and neat.

Now the opposite trick. "Jonah is timid, but his sister is bold and loud." The word but tells you a flip is coming. His sister is bold. So Jonah must be the opposite of bold. Timid means shy. A word that means the opposite is called an antonym. When a sentence sets up a contrast, the antonym tells you what the new word is not, and that is often enough.

Contrast clues come with signal words too. But. Unlike. However. Instead of. On the other hand. When you see one, look on both sides of it. One side has the word you do not know. The other side has its opposite. Here is the habit: find the signal, find the opposite, flip it.

Read these two sentences. "The bat flew out of the cave at dusk." "She swung the bat and hit the ball." The same word, bat, is in both. But nobody swings a flying animal at a baseball. Bat has two meanings. A word with more than one meaning is a multiple-meaning word. English is full of them. Bark, ring, wave, light, watch, park, bank.

Here is the good news. You already know how to sort them out. Use the context. In the first sentence, bat flew out of a cave. Animals fly. So this bat is the animal. In the second, she swung it and hit a ball. That is the wooden bat. The other words in the sentence pick the meaning for you.

Try one more. "We sat on the bank and watched the river." A bank where you keep money does not sit next to rivers. So this bank must be the ground along the water. When a sentence seems silly, stop. The word may have a second meaning you have not tried yet. Swap in the other meaning and see if the sentence makes sense.

Picture three people going down the sidewalk. One walks. One strolls. One marches. All three are moving on foot. But you see three different pictures. The stroller is slow and relaxed, maybe eating ice cream. The marcher is stiff and quick, arms swinging like a soldier. Walk, stroll and march are synonyms, but they are not the same. Each one has its own shade of meaning.

Think of it like paint. Blue, sky blue and navy are all blue. But you would not paint a police car sky blue. Words work the same way. Big, large, huge, gigantic and gargantuan all mean big. But they get bigger as you go. Said, whispered, shouted and screamed all mean spoke. But each one turns the volume up or down.

Writers pick the exact shade on purpose. If you read that a boy crept into the room, you know he was sneaking. If he stomped in, he was angry. When you write, do the same. Do not settle for the first word. Ask what exact picture you want your reader to see. Then choose the word that paints it.

A dictionary is a book that lists thousands of words and tells what they mean. The words are in alphabetical order, a to z. All the a words come first, then the b words, and so on. Inside the a words, the order goes by the second letter. Ant comes before apple. Then by the third letter if needed. Apple comes before apron.

Flipping page by page would take forever. So each page has two guide words printed at the top. The first guide word is the first word on that page. The second is the last word on that page. Every word on the page falls between them in alphabetical order. If the guide words are lamp and lemon, then leaf is on that page. Lion is not. It comes after lemon.

Here is how to use them. Say your word is marble. Open near the middle, since m is in the middle of the alphabet. Look at the guide words. Mask and meal? Marble comes before mask, so flip back. Man and mare? Marble comes after man and before mare. This is the page. Run your finger down and find it.

You found the page. Now look at the entry, which is everything the dictionary says about one word. First comes the word itself, in dark print, often broken into syllables. Then the pronunciation, which shows how to say it, with a mark on the syllable you say loudest. Then a small tag like n or v. Then the meanings, each with a number.

That small tag is the part of speech. It tells the job the word does in a sentence. N means noun, a person, place or thing. V means verb, an action or a state. Adj means adjective, a word that describes a noun. Adv means adverb, a word that tells how, when or where. The tag matters because some words do different jobs. Watch can be a noun, the thing on your wrist, or a verb, to look at.

When an entry has several numbered meanings, do not grab the first one. Go back to your sentence. Which meaning fits? "The dog was shedding" does not fit shed, a small building. It fits shed, to lose hair. The sentence chooses the meaning, just like it did with context clues. The dictionary gives you the choices. Your reading picks.

Flip to the back of your science book. Past the last chapter, before the index, there is a section called the glossary. It looks like a small dictionary. Words in alphabetical order, each with a meaning. But it holds only the words that matter in that one book. A science glossary has habitat and energy. It does not have banana or bicycle.

This makes the glossary faster than a dictionary. Fewer words means fewer pages. And the meaning it gives is the one the book uses. A dictionary might list five meanings for energy. The science glossary gives you the one your science teacher means. Many textbooks print glossary words in dark print in the chapter to tell you they are there.

So here is the order to try when a word stops you. First, context clues in the sentence. Second, word parts you know. Third, the glossary if the book has one. Fourth, the dictionary. Most of the time you will not get past step one or two. But when you need steps three and four, now you know how to use them.

Read this line: "Her hands were as cold as ice." Her hands were not actually ice. The writer is comparing her hands to ice to show how cold they were. A comparison that uses the word like or as is called a simile. He ran like the wind. The baby slept like a rock. The sun was as hot as an oven. Similes make a picture the reader can feel.

Now this one: "It is raining cats and dogs." No animals are falling from the sky. This is an idiom, a saying that means something different from what its words say. Raining cats and dogs means raining hard. Break a leg means good luck. Hit the hay means go to bed. Piece of cake means easy. You cannot figure out an idiom from its parts. You have to learn it.

This is tricky for anyone new to English, and that is nobody’s fault. Idioms are like inside jokes that a whole language shares. When a sentence sounds impossible, cats falling from clouds, ask if it is an idiom. Then use the context. "The test was a piece of cake, so I finished early." Finishing early tells you piece of cake means easy.

Some words follow you from class to class. In reading, the teacher says, "Compare the two characters." In math, "Compare the two fractions." In science, "Compare the two rocks." The word is the same every time. Compare means look at two things to see how they are alike and different. Words like this are called academic words. They are the words of school.

Here are three that show up everywhere. Compare, which you just met. Evidence, which means facts or details that support an idea. Your teacher says, "Find evidence in the text." A scientist says, "The evidence shows it." And structure, which means the way something is built or put together. A story has a structure. A bridge has a structure. A cell has a structure.

A few more to keep: explain, describe, summarize, analyze, predict. When a question uses one of these words, it is telling you what kind of answer it wants. Describe wants details. Explain wants reasons. Predict wants a guess about what comes next. Learn these words once and every test in every class gets a little clearer.