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[ [ un [ lock ] verb ] verb able ] adj. Only certain verbs or nouns can be used to form a new verb having the opposite meaning. In particular, using verbs describing an irreversible action produces words often considered nonsense, e.g. unkill, unspend, unlose, unring. These words may nevertheless be in occasional use for humorous or other effect.
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 atta
A few adjectives have a fifth form, viz. an additional masculine singular form for use in liaison before a noun beginning with a vowel or a "mute h", e.g. un beau jardin, un bel homme, une belle femme, de beaux enfants, de belles maisons (a beautiful garden, a handsome man, a beautiful woman, beautiful children, beautiful houses).
It may involve the use of an affix (such as with employ → employee), or it may occur via conversion (such as with the derivation of the noun run from the verb to run). In contrast, a derivation resulting in a verb may be called verbalization (such as from the noun butter to the verb to butter). Some words have specific exceptions to these ...
Adding a prefix to the beginning of an English word changes it to a different word. For example, when the prefix un-is added to the word happy, it creates the word unhappy. The word prefix is itself made up of the stem fix (meaning "attach", in this case), and the prefix pre-(meaning "before"), both of which are derived from Latin roots.
Elision is indicated in the spelling of some compound words, such as presqu'île "peninsula", aujourd'hui "today", and quelqu'un "someone". At the beginnings of words, the aspirated h forbids elision. Example: Le Havre. The mute h, however, requires elision. Example: l'homme. Both types of "h" are silent regardless.
un rosso libro = a book that is red (the marked case; it is especially important to the intended meaning that the book is red, as opposed to some other color) un buon uomo = a good man (the unmarked case) un uomo buono = a man who is good (the marked case; it is especially important to the intended meaning that he is good, the adjective is ...
Most of these words are written with a leading h (haricot, héros, haleter) which is not pronounced itself, but a few begin with a vowel or glide (onze, oui, yaourt). Note that some words beginning in h do experience liaison (e.g. homme in tout homme). Such words are said to begin with a mute h or h muet.