Latin and Greek Roots

A root is the part of a word that carries its meaning. Learn that loqu is to speak, and loquacious, eloquent, colloquial and grandiloquent stop being four words to memorise and become one idea with four endings. 20 roots, 147 words.

How this list was chosen

These lists are written by hand, one word at a time. Matching words to roots by spelling was tried first and abandoned: searching for ver (truth) returns adverse and avert, which carry vert (turn), and min (small) returns eminent and illuminate. Roughly a third of what it found was right, which is not a rate you can correct your way out of.

So each word here was checked against its etymology. Pedantic is not under ped (foot) — it comes from the Greek for child. Autonomous is not under nom (name) — its root is nomos, law. Those two look like members and are not.

A root needs five words from our list to earn a page, which is why bene, magn and morph are missing: the roots are real, but this is a curated test-vocabulary list rather than a dictionary, and we hold two words each.