root word
Word's ancestral form
A root word is the base form of a word before prefixes, suffixes, or other modifications are added.
In unhappiness, the root word is happy.
Root words carry the core meaning that derived forms build upon.
The term appears most often in language instruction, where identifying root words helps students decode unfamiliar vocabulary.
- formShape or document
- baseSupporting bottom structure
- stemPlant's central axis
- originStarting point or source
- cognateWord sharing etymological origin
derivation · etymology · radical · proto-language · inflection · lexeme · lemma · meaning · Latin · morphology · core · building block · anchor · linguistic · source · compound · primitive · trunk
- languagelanguage, words, grammar, spelling, alphabet
- vocabularywords, new words, term, terms, definition
- originalsoriginal, authentic, genuine, prototype, archetype
- rootsradicle, zeros, solutions, eigenvalues, x-intercepts
- etymologyetymon, origin, derivation, loan words, derivations
- linguisticslinguistics, phoneme, phonemes, morpheme, morphemes