Root Words
What are Root Words?
Some words are made up of different parts, for example, unemployment
unemployment has a beginning (prefix), a middle (root word) and an ending (suffix).
The root word is the basic word and by adding prefixes and suffixes, we can change its meaning.
If we take the root word, employ, and add other suffixes we can make other words, such as employed, employee, employer. Both the spelling and the meanings of the words are linked.
Where words are linked like this, they are called a word family.
Here are some more examples of root words and their word families:
use: useless, usable, used, using, user, misuse
friend: friendly, friendship, unfriendly, friendless
faith: faithful, faithfully, unfaithful, unfaithfully