Vocabulary for the Common Core. Robert J. Marzano

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      There are three distinct types of word parts: prefixes, suffixes, and root words. Prefixes, which come at the beginning of a word, typically add to or change the meaning of the root word to which they are attached. Suffixes, which come at the end of a word, typically affect the root word’s part of speech. Collectively, prefixes and suffixes are referred to as affixes. Root words are often based on Greek or Latin and carry specific meanings.

       Affixes

      In 1989, Thomas White, Joanne Sowell, and Alice Yanagihara examined the words in The American Heritage Word Frequency Book (Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971) to identify the most frequently used prefixes and suffixes in English. They found that the top twenty prefixes and suffixes accounted for 97–99 percent of all words with affixes (as shown in table 2.6). It is interesting to note that the three most frequently occurring prefixes are used in 51 percent of all prefixed words and the three most frequently occurring suffixes account for 65 percent of all words with suffixes.

Table 2.6: Frequently Occurring Prefixes and Suffixes