Prefixes
A Latin prefix meaning “both” or “around”
What is ambi/ambo
A Latin base meaning “mind,” “feeling,” or “life”
What is ANIM-
Monday traces back to the Latin phrase dies lunae and the Greek phrase hemera Selenes, meaning this
What is day of the moon
This is the language Chaucer wrote in
What is Middle English
What is a hybrid
A Latin prefix meaning against
What is contra
A Latin base meaning to shut
What is CLUD- CLUS-
This word originated with the Latin word meaning “rural,” “rustic,” or “from the country side”
What is pagan
This famous Anglo-Saxon epic was composed in Old English
What is Beowulf
This is the word for when one of two identical sounds in a word changes in order to be less identical
What is dissimilation
A Latin prefix meaning “across” or “through”
What is trans-, tran-, tra-
A Latin base meaning “to teach”
What is DOC- DOCT-
This month is named after the Roman god of war
What is March
The invasion of this man and his army in 1066 marks the turning point between Old English and Middle English
Who is William the Conqueror (or William of Normandy)
This is the creation of one word from another by the clipping off of a suffix, such as -ion, -er, -or, and -ar. These new word form new parts of speech.
What is back formation
A Latin prefix meaning “backward” or “behind”
What is retro
A Latin base meaning “to carry” or “to bear”
What is FER- or LAT-
This word meaning “genealogy” comes from the Latin meaning “food of a crane”
What is pedigree
In 1876, Sir William Jones presented a paper suggesting this as a hypothetical common ancestor of many languages around the world.
What is Proto-Indo-European
This is the name for when a word changes meaning
What is semantic change
A Latin prefix meaning “apart,” “in different directions,” or “not”
What is dis-, di-, dif-
A Latin base meaning “to blow”
What is FLAT-
The name of this class of Celtic priests comes from the root meaning “oak tree”
Who are the Druids
These were the first “foreign” invaders to arrive in the British Isles after the Celts had settled there between 1000 - 400 BCE
Who are the Romans
Similar to aphaeresis, this is the word for the linguistic phenomenon of the first unaccented vowel sound being lost from a word
What is aphesis