Instruction 1-1

Word Origins | Context Clues | Multiple Meanings of Words | Figurative and Metaphorical Use of Words | Summary

Pre Test			Post Test
Q&A	Beginning		Q&A
Q&A	Middle	Word Origins	Q&A
	Advanced	Words

There are thousands and thousands of words in the English language. Most people use hundreds of different words every day. Did you ever stop to wonder where all those words came from?

The study of words is called etymology. Nobody knows for sure when human beings first started using words. Some etymologists (the scholars who study words) think we began to speak by imitating the sounds of animals. Some of our words do sound like the sounds they describe – meow for example, sounds like the noise a cat makes. Zip, crackle, and pop also imitate sounds.

Many of our words come from foreign languages – chow from Chinese, for example (it means "food"). Or robot from Czech (it means "tireless worker"). Also, denim from French, which means fabric di (of) Nimes, the city where it was invented.

Some words come to us through extended meanings. A word starts out meaning one thing and eventually "extends" to mean other things, too. The word fly is a good example. It originally meant "to soar through the air," but it has been "extended" to mean both an insect and a baseball hit up in the air.

It's pretty obvious where some words come from, like backpack. Backpack is a compound word. Compound word means two words put together to form one word. Bedroom and dishpan are other examples of compound words. Another way we form new words is when pronunciation changes. When French words came into the language after the Norman Conquest, Old English changed to Middle English.

We create new words when spelling changes. The word alone used to be spelled "all alone." And the word good-bye used to be the religious benediction "God be with you."

Some words are simply abbreviations (the shortening of words). The New York Knicks used to be called The New York "Knickerbockers." This is a nickname for the descendants of the early Dutch settlers of New York. It came from the kinds of pants they wore, which led to another abbreviation – knickers (which today means underpants). Another common abbreviation is phone, which is short for "telephone."

A lot of our words are made out of Greek and Latin word roots and affixes. There are two kinds of affixes – prefixes and suffixes. Pre- meaning "before," comes at the beginning of a word. Suf- meaning "after," comes at the end of a word.

Latin was spoken in ancient Rome, and Greek was spoken in Greece (both ancient and modern). Here are a few words with Greek and Latin roots or affixes: 

Learning about words can be fascinating. For instance, the word addict comes from the Latin word addictus, meaning assigned or surrendered to. In Rome, soldiers were given slaves as a reward for outstanding performance in battle. Eventually the word came to mean anyone who is a slave to something. And there are over 600 different kinds of phobias – although pantophobia in the list above pretty much covers everything.

Now let's do Practice Exercise 1-1 (top).

Next Page:  Context Clues (top)