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How to know whether a English word is from Latin origin or Greek origin?
How to know whether a English word is from Latin origin or Greek origin, is there any ways to find it ?
Nov 10, 2014 11:37 AM
Answers · 6
2
Many dictionaries will give the etymology of the word. For example, the word "origin" has Latin roots. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/origin
November 10, 2014
I've noticed that KP has already given some useful advice about prefixes and spelling, so here are a few more clues to identifying Greek/Latin words.
- Most of the time, those same words came to us through French, so French spellings like "the silent e" and endings like -ion also give us a clue.
- The Latin/Greek words tend to be long, and even though you can divide them into parts, the separate parts don't usually function as separate words. (Unlike longer Anglo-Germanic words, which you can divide and use as separate words.)
- You'll see these words used in formal and academic contexts. Using them in regular speech sounds a little awkward, and if it's a verb, we'd normally use a phrasal verb in daily speech instead of its formal equivalent.
- Even if you know one or two random words in those languages, if you also recognise those words in English, then it's probably a Latin/Greek origin. For a long time, the borrowing was entirely one-way, into English.
November 10, 2014
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Hunter
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