hello readers today we're going to talk about things called affixes one of the things that i love about the english language is how flexible its words can be you can take little word parts and stick them together to make new words if i read something once i've read it if i read it again now i've reread it that little re thing tells you oh it's happening again there are lots of these little word parts in english and we call them affixes they can come at the beginning or the end of words at the beginning of words we call them prefixes un is a great example of a prefix it means no or not when you're upset you're not happy you're unhappy when you are not available you are therefore unavailable you see when we put affixes at the ends of words they're called suffixes the suffix full for instance means full of so if you're full of joy you're joyful if you're full of gratitude you're grateful and if you're full of power you are say it with me powerful you are powerful look at all these words you can make some common prefixes you might see include re meaning again as in redo or reread dis meaning not or the opposite as in disuse or disobey this meaning wrong as in mistake or misunderstand some common suffixes you might see include l y or li meaning a way to do something as in happily or snappily less meaning without as in harmless or wireless nes meaning a state of being which is another way of saying it makes nouns as in happiness or hopefulness oh did you see what i did there i took the word hopeful which already has a suffix in it it means full of hope and i added nes to it now it's a word that means the state of being full of hope that's the magic of affixes they're these word parts that you can snap on to pretty much any word in order to change its meaning so remember prefixes are word parts that come at the beginning of words the prefix pre means before as a little clue and help you remember and suffixes are word parts that come at the end of the word they're going to be lists of these affixes for you to study but what i liked doing when i first studied this stuff was to take those lists and make them into games make nonsense words write roots and affixes on little index cards and shuffle them up into new combinations and then argue with your friends and family about what your newly minted words mean let me shuffle up some right now it's sure to be a dis petrographic time dis petrographic okay so that's no rock pictures adjective forming suffix it's a describer so i guess i will not be taking any pictures of rocks anyway you can learn anything dave it out