Welcome to Cycle 3, December 2009

READING AND ETYMOLOGY

We are reading "Only Partly Here," by Lucius Sheppard.  We've examined a list of "vocabulary words" from the story.  How many of them do you already know?  Knowing the etymology of a word can help you determine its meaning.  Also,  if you understand what form of the word it is (noun, verb, etc), that can help you figure out its exact meaning in what you're reading.

Students identified meanings of the following vocabulary words from the story:

phantoms = things that disappear, things that are here and then gone, things that appear ghostly

apparitions = things that appear

vacancy = emptiness

ceremonial = something done as in a ceremony

archaeologist = someone who studies the artifacts of human civilization.  The suffix "-ologist" means someone who studies something

scorching, scorch = to burn, something that is burning.  Also, something that has been burnt.

wreckage = the thing that is wrecked.  The actual stuff: twisted metal, etc, that is the result of a wreck.

cosmic = having to do with the sky, with the stars, with the universe

interlocking = inter=between, + lock = things that lock between them

corporate = having to do with business

edible = ible = able, possible, so "edible" = able to be eaten.  Not to be confused with
editable = able to be edited.

decompress = opposite of "compress."  "Compress" = squeeze together, make smaller, so "decompress" = expand, relax.

articulate = well spoken, to make clear, to say clearly

speculate = to guess

transported = trans=change, port=to take from place to place

In our class discussion we spoke about etymology = the study of words (not to be confused with entomology= the study of insects). What is etymology?  Etymology is the study of the history and meanings of words.  When we know what the root word is, what language it came from and what it means, we can better determine the meaning of the word we are looking at.

What is the root word?  Sometimes there is a part of the word that you already know and recognize.  That might be because you know a word that is similar, or because you know a word in Spanish that sounds like it.  These words may be related to the word you are looking to define.  Many of the most complex words in English have a Latin root.  We know that Spanish is a Latin language.  If you know a similar word in Spanish it may have the same or a similar meaning to the one you are trying to define.  Use your knowledge of other languages and/or your familiarity with other English words to figure out the meaning of the word you are trying to define.  Here is a great page where you can find root words and their meanings.


Many words also have prefixes and suffixes.

A prefix is a small beginning part of a word.  The prefix comes before the root part of the word.  

As a class we brainstormed some prefixes, and came up with the following:
un = not
non= not
dis = against
sub = under
pre = before
re = again
bi = two
tri = three
quad, quart = four
multi = many


Suffixes - the endings of certain words - also can have a specific meaning.  As a class we figured out that:

-ology = the study of something
-tion = the state of being
-able, ible = ability to do something


Here are some great pages to look up the meanings of root words, suffixes, and prefixes.