Greek and Latin Roots

Most of the harder words on Word Knowledge are built from Latin and Greek parts. That is not a curiosity; it is the reason a systematic approach beats memorizing lists, and it is the highest-return thing you can study for this subtest.

How to use a root

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The method is the same every time.

1. Break the word into parts. Benevolent is bene plus vol plus ent.
2. Name the part you recognize. Bene means good or well.
3. Predict a rough meaning. Something to do with good will.
4. Eliminate on that. Any negative choice is gone.
5. Choose from what is left, using charge or context to break a tie.

Step 4 is where the points are. You do not need a definition. You need to delete the wrong answers, and a root usually deletes two of them instantly.

Check the root against a word you know

Before trusting a root, test it.

You think ped means foot. Check it against pedal and pedestrian - both are about feet. Good. Now pediatrician, which is about children, not feet, because that is a different ped from Greek rather than Latin.

When a root does not fit a word you already know, you have the wrong root. That check takes two seconds and it prevents the confident wrong answer, which is the expensive kind.

The high-yield roots

These repay memorizing. They are grouped by meaning, because that is how they stick.

People and life

Speaking and writing

Seeing, knowing and feeling

Doing and making

Size, degree and quality

Place and motion

Roots doing real work

Circumspect most nearly means

(A) careless (B) cautious (C) circular (D) talkative

Circum means around, spect means look. Looking around before acting. Prediction: careful, watchful.

(B) cautious. Note that (C) is the lookalike, built from circum alone and ignoring the rest of the word.

Loquacious most nearly means

(A) silent (B) talkative (C) locally grown (D) liquid

Loqu means speak, and -ous means full of. Full of speaking.

(B) talkative. (A) is the opposite - the standard trap. (C) and (D) are lookalikes built on sound rather than meaning.

Perfidious most nearly means

(A) loyal (B) treacherous (C) thorough (D) fragrant

Fid means faith, so the word is about faith. Per- here is the harder part, and this is where a root gets you close but not all the way: the word could plausibly mean very faithful or utterly unfaithful.

Both (A) and (B) survive the root test, and everything else is gone. From there, charge decides - "perfidious" does not sound like a compliment - and the answer is (B) treacherous.

That third example is the honest one. The root narrowed four choices to two, which is what roots reliably do. Expecting more from them leads to overconfidence.

How to study these

Not as a list of forty rows to recite. Learn them in families, five or six at a time, and for each one write down three words you already know that contain it. The known words are what make the root stick, and they are also the check you run in the exam.

Twenty minutes a day for two weeks covers this table comfortably. That is a far better use of the time than another hundred flashcards, because a root keeps paying on words you have never seen.

What you can skip

• Which language a root comes from. No question asks whether a root is Greek or Latin. Its meaning is all that matters.
• Root-meaning questions do exist - five, all at the hardest difficulty, such as "Induce contains a root meaning what?" - and the high-yield list above covers them.

Where people lose points

Trusting a root too far. It narrows; it rarely decides.

Ignoring the prefix, which can reverse the meaning entirely.

Forcing a root that does not fit. Ped in pediatrician is not feet.

Picking the lookalike that shares a sound rather than a part. Circular for circumspect.

Learning roots without example words, which makes them impossible to check under pressure.

Work one in under a minute

The inscription on the monument had eroded.

(A) carving (B) shadow (C) paint (D) crack

In- means into or on, script means write. Writing on something. Prediction: something written or carved into it.

(A) carving. "Paint" is the near miss - it is also writing on a surface, but it is not what script into stone means, and "carving" is closer.

Where this leads

Roots, prefixes and suffixes are three parts of one method. Together they make an unfamiliar word answerable rather than a coin flip.