“The 14 Words that Make All the Difference”

“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!

prefixes, suffixes, and root words… Did you know that….. 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.” How can prefixes help you as a reader?

As I was reading, The Odyssey, chapter five page 44… I had a clunk….. clunk ….”They 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.” inwardly 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 ….”They 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.” 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 that Odysseus, destroyer of cities, son of Laertes, blinded you!” (page 47) unsightly unsightly un “Un-” is a prefix that means not or the opposite

Closer look …. unsightly un • 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 eye you have there, just day that Odysseus, destroyer of cities, son of Laertes, blinded you!” (page 47) unsightly 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) Prefixes

“The 14 Words that Make All the Difference”