IV. Homophone List
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affect - effect aisle - isle allowed - aloud ate - eight
ball - bawl bear - bare base - bass billed - build blew - blue board - bored break - brake buy - by - bye
capital – capitol cell – sell cent - scent - sent chance - chants chews - choose close - clothes coarse - course creak – creek
days – daze dear – deer dew - do- due
facts - fax fair - fare fairy - ferry find - fined flour - flower for - four foreword – forward
gene - jean grease - Greece groan - grown
hair - hare hay - hey heal - heel hear - here hi - high hoarse - horse hole - whole hour - our
knight - night knot - naught - not know - no |
leased - least loan - lone
made - maid mail - male marry - merry meat - meet mince - mints missed - mist morning - mourning none - nun one - won
pail - pale pear - pair patience - patients piece - peace plain - plane practice - practise
rain - reign read - red right - write road - rode rose - rows
sail - sale scene – seen sea - see sew - so sole - soul son - sun stair - stare steal - steel suite - sweet
their - there threw - through to - too - two
vary - very
waist - waste wait - weight war - wore where – wear weak - week weather - whether which - witch wood - would
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V. Prefixes are often used to give adjectives a negative or an opposite meaning, e.g. comfortable/uncomfortable, convenient/inconvenient and similar/dissimilar are opposites. Other examples are 'unjust', 'inedible', 'disloyal'. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of knowing which prefix any adjective will use to form its opposite.
in- becomes im- before a root beginning with 'm' or 'p', e.g. immature, impatient, impartial, improbable. Similarly in- becomes ir- before a word beginning with -r, and il- before a word beginning with '1', e.g. irreplaceable, irreversible, illegal, illegible, illiterate.
The prefix in- (and its variations) does not always have a negative meaning - often it gives the idea of inside or into, e.g. internal, import, insert, income.
The prefixes un- and dis- can also form the opposites of verbs, e.g. tie/untie, appear/disappear. These prefixes are used to reverse the action of the verb. Here are some more examples: disagree, disapprove, disbelieve, disconnect, discredit, dislike, dismount, disprove, disqualify, unbend, undo, undress, unfold, unload, unlock, unveil, unwrap, unzip.
Here are examples of prefixes in English. Some of these words are used with a hyphen.
|
prefix |
meaning |
examples |
|
|
anti
|
against |
anti-war |
antisocial |
|
auto |
of or by oneself |
autobiography |
auto-pilot |
|
bi |
two, twice |
bicycle |
bilingual |
|
ex |
former |
ex-wife |
ex-smoker |
|
ex |
out of |
extract |
excommunicate |
|
micro |
small |
microwave microscopic | |
|
mis |
badly/wronglyy |
mistranslate misinform | |
|
mono |
one/single |
monotonous monologue | |
|
multi |
many |
multi-purpose multi-media | |
|
over |
too much |
overdo |
oversleep overeat |
|
post |
after |
postwar |
post-impressionist |
|
pre |
before |
preconceived pre-war | |
|
pro |
in favour of |
pro-government pro-revolutionary | |
|
pseudo |
false |
pseudo-scientific |
pseudo-intellectual |
|
re |
again or back |
retype |
replace rewind |
|
semi |
half |
semicircular semi-detached | |
|
sub |
under |
subdivision |
submarine |
|
under |
not enough |
underworked undercooked | |
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