Peeling Back to the Base Word

Remove prefixes and suffixes, undoing spelling changes, to find a word's base.

Long words often wear several layers: a prefix, a base, and one or more suffixes, sometimes with a spelling change. To read and understand them, peel the layers one at a time. Take 'unbelievably'. Peel off 'un' at the front. Peel off 'ably' at the end, which is -able and -ly joined together. What is left is 'believ', so think: the base was 'believe', with its e dropped before 'able'.

Now build the meaning back up: believe, believable (can be believed), unbelievable (cannot be believed), unbelievably (in a way that cannot be believed). Another: 'reapplied'. Peel 're' and 'ed'. 'Appli' came from 'apply', with y changed to i. So reapplied means applied again.

• 1Peel prefix and suffixes one layer at a time.
• 2Undo spelling changes: add back the e, change i back to y.
• 3Rebuild the meaning from the base outward.