Vocabulary: 7 English words that can be suffixes

Suffixes are additions to words that change the original word’s meaning or function. In this lesson, we will look at seven suffixes that are also words on their own, such as “like”, “phobia”, and “ware”. For example, the word “hood” means a head covering that is attached to a jacket. But did you know that if you add it at the end of “child”, the meaning of “child” and “hood” change completely? Suffixes can help you be more precise in your language, which is why they are perfect for you to use in your IELTS and TOEFL tests. Add some variety to your writing with this new and more advanced vocabulary. Take the quiz on this lesson here: https://www.engvid.com/vocabul....ary-7-english-words-

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. Welcome to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. Today's lesson is going to be a bit of a mix of grammar, and vocab, and writing - all of the skills you need together because we're going to be looking at suffixes; and more specifically, we're going to be looking at seven words that can also be used as a suffix.

Now, first of all, what is a "suffix"? A "suffix" is a piece of something that you add to the end of a word. It's a word ending. Right? Now, most of you might be familiar, for example, with if I add "ly" to the end of an adjective, I can change it into an adverb; or if I add "ment" to the end of a word, I make it a noun. Now, these suffixes change words in terms of parts of speech. I change a verb to a noun or a noun to a verb, etc. What these do... what these specific suffixes do is they change the meaning of a word completely.

Now, the reason it's important to know these and the reason I mentioned writing is because these are not used enough by writers; especially those of you taking tests, like IELTS, TOEFL, CAE, etc. - you need to have your vocabulary range. Right? That's one of the things they're scoring you on. You want to have nice words, but nice words don't have to be big words; they just have to be words that are not commonly used. And a lot of people do not use words that include these suffixes, and they're very useful words. Okay? So we're going to look at some of them.

So, when I add "hood" to the end of a word, for example... now, the word "hood" by itself, if you have a hoodie, if you have a sweatshirt with a hood that goes over your head; or if you think about in your kitchen you have a... you have your stove, and above it you have a hood with a fan to take all the steam and oil, or whatever you're cooking - the smells. Your car, the front of your car, over your engine has a hood. So, think of a "hood" as covering everything. But as a suffix, it's basically the state, condition, or quality of something.

So, now, for example, when I speak of "childhood", I'm talking about the whole time of being a child and everything that is included in that. So, "childhood" includes going to school and having friends, and playing outside, and having toys, and having... playing video games, and innocence. All of the ideas we think of: "What is a child?" are included in the childhood; so it's a period of time where you're a child. The opposite: "adulthood" - the time of being an adult; of having a job, and having a family, and responsibilities. Okay?

A "neighbourhood" is the area where all the people are neighbours; where all the neighbours live together and share a small community. Okay? "Likelihood". "Likely" means probably will happen. The "likelihood" means the chance of something being likely; the chance of it being... or the condition of it being likely. So, the likelihood of this guy winning the presidency is very low. But turns out that the likelihood was not as low as everybody expected, for example. Right?

Now, the reason I mentioned these: I've seen so many IELTS and TOEFL essays that do not use this word that should use this word. Right? People say: "Oh, the time that a person is a child... the time a person is a child", right? You have seven words when you could have said all of that with one word. If you can use one word, don't use seven words. Okay? So now we're talking about coherence and cohesion, which includes brevity. These suffixes give you a lot of range in terms of vocabulary. Learn how to use them properly. Lots of words like this. If you Google: "Words that end in 'hood'", you'll see a whole bunch of them. Okay?

"Like". So, "like" has many meanings, but the one we're going to look at is similar to; so something is like something else. But I don't have to separate it into a whole sentence; I can use this as a suffix. I can talk about things, attitudes, behaviours, but you have to be a little bit careful. Okay? Now, if somebody is "childlike" means he is like a child. But what does that mean? It doesn't mean that he's small or whatever; it means he behaves like a child or he thinks like a child. So, we're not talking about physical; we're talking about mental or even personality-wise. And we're going to talk about "wise" in a second. […]