Suffixes

Suffixes are found at the end of words.Their function is similar to prefixes because they act as a source of information for the word. Have you ever seen a colour used to indicate something? Like how green denotes something positive and red negative similarly some suffixes announce what part of speech a particular word is. Let us look at some examples.

For a noun

At the end of the nouns, we usually find these suffixes: -ance, -ation, -ness, -ism, -ment, -ship.

Suffixes do not indicate the part of speech alone, they add meaning to words as well. The endings -er, -or, -ist, or -yst are used to denote people who perform a particular task or activity. Examples are plumber, operator, analyst, and scientist.

For a verb

We can find a lot of suffixes which are associated with the meaning of the word ‘make’. By combining the base imply with the suffix -ate, you create the word implicate, which means to imply.

Other suffixes with this meaning are -ize, -ise, -ify, and -en. Can you think of other verbs that end with these suffixes

For an adverb

In most of the cases, adverbs are formed by adding -ly to an adjective. For example, wonderful becomes wonderfully If the adjective already ends with a y as in tidy, you would replace the y with -ily to form the adverb tidily. There is a special rule for adjectives ending in -able, -ible, or -le: replace the -e with -y. For most words ending in -ic (with the exception of public) add -ally.

For an adjective

Greenish is a color that strongly reminds us of green, but is not exactly green. We find people using ‘ish’ very often as it carries the meaning ‘similar’. Nowadays, the suffix ‘ish’ is used even alone, to convey certain meanings, like more of a slang. The slang use of this suffix means “something like that.”

-Al, -ar, -ed, -ic, -ical, and -ive signify having the quality of. Magnetic objects, for example, have qualities of magnets.

The -ous of dangerous means full of or like, while -less means without.

 

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