Ms. Thompson

English

Many words in English come from Greek words. Learning these roots is a great way to build your vocabulary. Sometimes you can figure out words in English you don’t know by putting together the roots.

Examples: telegraph = tele (from afar) + graph (writing) = writing from far away

chronometer = chron (time) + meter (measure) = a device that measures time

Below is a list of Greek roots. The suffixes are found at the ends of words; the other roots can be found in different places in words.

-archy: rule by

-graph: writing

-meter: measure

-phobia: abnormal fear of

bibli- : book

cardi- : heart

chrom-, chromat- : color

chron- : time

dem- : people

dyn-, dynam- : force, power

ger-, geront-: old age, old people

kilo- : one thousand

kine-, cine- : to move

log-, -logue : speech, word

mim- : imitate

onym- : name, word

ped-, paed- : child

poly- : many, much

soph- : wise

tele- : afar, operating at a distance

Find a word in the dictionary based on each of the twenty Greek roots above. Make sure your words are based on the roots and don’t just have the same letters. (For example, anger has nothing to do with the Greek root ger-, meaning old people.) On a separate piece of paper, list the root, the word, and one dictionary definition of the word.