Review: Reading a Word's History to Unlock Its Meaning

Combine morphology, borrowing, and semantic change into one routine for unfamiliar words.

This track has given you several lenses for an unfamiliar word. Use them together in order. First, look for morphemes: prefixes, roots, and suffixes, including assimilated prefixes and two-stem roots. Second, consider the source: is the word Greek, Latin, French, Germanic, or borrowed from another language? Third, ask whether the meaning may have broadened, narrowed, risen, or fallen since the word was formed. Finally, test your reading against the sentence. Worked example: 'The treaty was meant to be irrevocable.

' Morphemes: ir- (an assimilated in-, 'not'), re- ('back'), voc ('call,' from Latin vocare), -able ('able to be'). Assembled: not able to be called back. Source: Latin, typical of legal language. Context: treaties are serious agreements, so 'cannot be undone' fits. You have decoded a formal word without a dictionary, and you know why it means what it does.

• 1Break the word into morphemes first.
• 2Consider the language of origin and the domain.
• 3Allow for semantic change, then confirm with context.