English Vocabulary & Language 20 flashcards ~10 min

Latin and Greek Root Words

About this deck

Learning root words is one of the fastest ways to expand your vocabulary, because a single root can unlock the meaning of dozens of unfamiliar English words. This deck of 20 flashcards covers the most frequent Latin and Greek roots, prefixes and suffixes — including bio, chron, graph, phon, dict, spect, port, and scrib — pairing each one with its meaning and several real English words built from it, like biology, chronological, telegram and prescription. The deck also covers common prefixes like anti-, trans- and hyper-, and suffixes like -ology and -phobia, so you can start decoding unfamiliar words on sight rather than memorising them individually. Particularly useful for SAT and GRE vocabulary preparation, this deck trains a transferable skill: once you know that "path" means feeling or suffering, you can reason your way to the meaning of sympathy, empathy and pathology without ever having seen them before.

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Means "life" — e.g. biology (study of life), biography (life story), biodegradable.

Means "time" — e.g. chronological (in time order), chronic (persisting over time), synchronize.

Means "write/written" — e.g. autograph (self-written), telegram, graphic.

Means "sound" — e.g. telephone (sound from afar), symphony, phonetic.

Means "light" — e.g. photograph (light writing), photosynthesis, photon.

Means "feeling/suffering" — e.g. sympathy (feeling with), empathy, pathology.

Means "word/study" — e.g. dialogue (words between), biology (study of life), monologue.

Means "to say/speak" — e.g. predict (say beforehand), dictionary, contradict.

Means "to look/see" — e.g. inspect (look into), spectator, retrospect.

Means "to carry" — e.g. transport (carry across), portable, export.

Means "to write" — e.g. describe (write down), manuscript, prescription.

Means "to see" — e.g. visible (able to be seen), video, vision.

Means "to lead" — e.g. conduct (lead together), introduce, deduce.

Means "to believe/trust" — e.g. credible (believable), credit, incredulous.

Means "to send" — e.g. transmit (send across), submit, dismiss.

Means "against" — e.g. antisocial, antibody, antithesis.

Means "across/beyond" — e.g. transport, transatlantic, transform.

Means "over/excessive" — e.g. hyperactive, hyperbole, hypertension.

Means "the study of" — e.g. psychology, geology, biology.

Means "fear of" — e.g. claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces), arachnophobia (fear of spiders).