Suffixes and Parts of Speech

Roots and prefixes get the attention. Suffixes are the quiet one, and they earn their place by doing something the other two cannot: they let you delete wrong answers without engaging with meaning at all.

Why part of speech eliminates

Consider:

Tenacity most nearly means

(A) persistent (B) persistence (C) to persist (D) persistently

Every choice means roughly the same thing. The question is not testing what tenacity means; it is testing whether you noticed that -ity makes a noun, so only a noun can be the answer.

(B) persistence.

That is an extreme case, but the principle operates everywhere. If the word asked about is a noun and only two of the four choices are nouns, you are down to two before you have thought about meaning.

Noun endings

The largest family. A noun names a thing, a quality or a state.

-er, -or, -ist and -ant are worth a second look, because they name a person. If a question's word ends that way, the answer is a person, not an action or a quality. Antagonist is a person who opposes, not the act of opposing.

Adjective endings

An adjective describes a noun.

-ous and -ful both mean full of, and -less means without, which makes them the one suffix family that carries real meaning rather than only a category. Listless is without spirit; relentless is without letting up.

Verb endings

All four of these mean roughly "to make". Mollify is to make soft, placate is to make calm, exacerbate is to make worse.

Adverb endings

-ly is nearly the whole story, and it usually turns an adjective into an adverb: prudent becomes prudently.

The trap is that not every -ly word is an adverb. Friendly, lively, costly and orderly are adjectives. If the word describes a noun rather than an action, it is an adjective however it ends.

Using position instead of ending

In sentence-form questions you do not need the ending, because the sentence places the word.

His candor surprised the panel.

The word follows a possessive and acts as the subject, so it is a noun. Any verb or adjective among the choices can go, whatever candor means.

He spoke candidly about the failure.

The word modifies "spoke", so it is an adverb.

Where a word sits in a sentence fixes what kind of word it is, and that is available even for words whose endings tell you nothing.

Suffixes and roots together

The full method uses all three parts.

Gregarious most nearly means

(A) sociability (B) sociable (C) to socialize (D) solitary

Greg is a root meaning flock or herd. -ous means full of, and makes an adjective.

So: an adjective, about being in a flock. (B) sociable.

Note what each part did. The root gave the subject, the suffix gave the category and eliminated (A) and (C) outright, and the remaining choice (D) is the opposite, killed by the root. Three tools, one question, no dictionary.

What you can skip

• Grammar terminology. Gerunds, participles and infinitives never appear. Noun, verb, adjective and adverb are the only labels you need, and only to eliminate choices.

Where people lose points

Ignoring part of speech and picking a word that means the right thing in the wrong form.

Assuming every -ly word is an adverb. Friendly, costly, lively.

Reading -er, -or, -ist as an action rather than as a person.

Expecting a suffix to give meaning. Most do not, and that is fine; their job is to eliminate.

Ignoring the sentence's grammar when a sentence is provided.

Work one in under a minute

Her reticence during the briefing was noted.

(A) reserved (B) reluctance to speak (C) to withhold (D) noisily

The word follows "her" and is the subject of the sentence, so it is a noun. The -ence ending agrees.

That eliminates (A), an adjective, (C), a verb, and (D), an adverb, before meaning enters the picture at all.

(B) reluctance to speak, which is also the only noun.

Where this leads

Suffixes complete the word-parts method. With all three, an unfamiliar word is a two-way decision rather than a four-way guess.