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A circumfix (abbr: CIRC) [1] (also parafix, [2] confix, or ambifix) is an affix which has two parts, one placed at the start of a word, and the other at the end. Circumfixes contrast with prefixes, attached to the beginnings of words; suffixes, attached at the end; and infixes, inserted in the middle.
Words such as circumdare ("to surround") are split apart with other words of the sentence in between, e.g. circum virum dant: "they surround the man" (circumdant (circum- prefix + dant)). This device is used in this way to create a visual image of surrounding the man by means of the words on the line.
In the Middle Ages, the words de, borrowed from Latin and French, and the English of, were often used in names in England and Wales, as in "Simon de Montfort" and "Richard of Shrewsbury". The usage of "de" is often misunderstood, as in most cases it was used only in documents written in Latin or French.
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as un- , -ation , anti- , pre- etc., introduce a semantic change to the word they are attached to.
The following is an alphabetical list of Greek and Latin roots, stems, and prefixes commonly used in the English language from A to G. See also the lists from H to O and from P to Z . Some of those used in medicine and medical technology are not listed here but instead in the entry for List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes .
Thus, the word do, consisting of a single morpheme, is a verb, as is the word redo, which consists of the prefix re-and the base root do. However, there are a few prefixes in English that are class-changing in that the word resulting after prefixation belongs to a lexical category that is different from the lexical category of the base.
An example of historical elision in French that began at the phrasal level and became lexicalized is preposition de > d' in aujourd'hui "today", now felt by native speakers to be one word, but deriving from au jour de hui, literally "at the day of today" and meaning "nowadays", although hui is no longer recognized as meaningful in French. In ...
So is an English word that, apart from its other uses, has become increasingly popular in recent years as a coordinating conjunctive opening word in a sentence. This device is particularly used when answering questions although the questioner may also use the device. So may also be used to end sentences. When ending a sentence, it may be: