Writtenwyrdd

Useful roots for vocabulary building (repost)

Reposted from 8/9/2009:

One of the best things that ever happened to me in high school was Mr. Bini, the English teacher who gave we freshmen a list of Greek and Latin roots and forced us to memorize them.  Worse (to everyone else but me, it seemed) he made us use them, figure out what new words meant and other such 'tortures' in order to drum them into our heads. 

I've never had a better tool handed to me (except perhaps the multiplication tables, which I can at least still remember, unlike all the capitals of Europe or the location and misc info about all the 50 states.)

A quick search online can net you some pretty good word roots.  And, if you memorize them, you will have an incredibly powerful tool to help you increase your understanding of English and broaden your vocabulary. 

I find it particularly useful to know roots in order to build new vocabulary in my speculative fiction.  People may not understand the root consciously, but they generally do absorb a general sense of what a root can mean and get a sort of subliminal hint when the word I create is based on some appropriate Greek, Latin or other foreign word/root.

A few important roots to know:

• a/an: not, without
• a: on
• ab/s, a: from, away, off
• andr/o: male, man
• ante: before, in front
• anti: away, against
• co: with, together
• com: together
• de: reduce, away, down, remove
• di/s: apart, away, not
• dia: through, between, apart, across
• ex: from, out
• extra: out, about, beyond
• gyn: female, woman
• infra: beneath, below
• intra/intro: between, among
• ir: not
• ject: throw
• mis: bad, wrong, to hate
• non: no, not, without
• pan: all, any
• re: again, back, backwards
• self: of, for, or by itself
• serv: save, keep
• un: not, opposite of, lacking
• vers/vert: turn
• xen: foreign

There are many more of these, and it is a good idea (for your vocabulary's sake) to get familiar with the ones on the Espindle list.  It really is the best one I've found so far.

Random grammar and vocabulary stuff:
Did you know about the "phrasal verb"?  It's basically a compound verb, such as "down from," although there are other multi-word verb structures out there.  A good example of these is on EnglishClub.com here. 

EnglishClub.com also has a great page that lists and defines Latin phrases commonly used in English, which includes many of the abbreviations.  Also good stuff to have memorized. Some of my favs (which all of you should learn if you don't know them already):

e.g. (exempli gratia): for example
et al. (et alii, et alia): and others
etc. (et cetera): and the rest, and so forth
et seq. (et sequens, et sequentes, et sequentia): and the following
id. (idem): the same
i.e. (id est): that is

Links:
Espindle "Word Root Quick Reference" page.

(Please see the writing resources page in the top right sidebar, where other useful links are located.)

What do you call your perceptions?

I was reading a nice blog post of Tara Maya's on character-driven fiction wherein she uses the term qualia.  Which I had never heard.  So I looked it up.

Qualia, per Wikipedia, "is a term used in philosophy to describe the subjective quality of conscious experience. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the redness of an evening sky. Daniel Dennett writes that qualia is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us."  The importance of qualia in philosophy of mind comes largely from the fact that they are often seen as posing a fundamental problem for materialist explanations of the mind-body problem. Much of the debate over their existence hinges on the definition of the term that is used, as various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain properties." 

Qualia.  Wouldn't that make a nice title for a book?  Hmmm...the idea wheels are now churning...

Vocabulary to ideas again!

Schadenfreude (Pronounced: \ˈshä-d^ən-ˌfrȯi-də\): enjoyment obtained from the suffering of others.

Well, I knew this word long ago but hadn't heard it in so long I'd forgotten the meaning (not typical for me to have zero sense of a word's meaning). 

And vocabulary purely inspires me.  I can picture how one could use this word in a fictional world.  As follows:

• Horror:  A theme park called Schadenfreudia, where hapless souls (aka 'customers') are lured in and the paying customers are tortured, subjected to humiliation, and et cetera, and it turns out that not only are the paying customers paying for something they didn't want, they lose their souls in the process because the gatekeeper is Charon! And they paid him the cash to cross over!  Bwahaha!  (I mean, it could be a means of depopulating the world by Satan so he has a bit more elbow room to work; or  
  
• Schadenfreudia is a b&d club used as a setting in a Laurell K. Hamilton style dark fantasy. 
  
• Dark fantasy:  Fairies.  What more can I say?  Dark fairies embody schadenfreude.  Hand a lady a rose and when she sniffs it, the thing becomes a wad of dog doo.  Lure humans to drown because their floating hair and limbs 'look pretty'. The reasons for fairy actions are sooo ripe for schadenfreude as a motivation.
• Super hero:  Schadenfreude Man, who is an anti-(super)hero if there ever was one.  I suppose he or she could be a villain, but I like the idea of a dark hero, who does nearly as much bad as good because he CAN and he LIKES to, but he still follows his own moral code.  Maybe his superhero title could be Trainwreck??

And you know what?  Give me five minutes and I can get an idea from anything.  *Buffs nails on shirt*  Too bad I'm a bit slow on the follow through.  (You don't know how jealous I am of you guys who just whip out the prose.)