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The - prefix is a privative and the word means the opposite of excusable that is, "unable to be excused, not excusable". invaluable That is also a privative but it does not mean "not valuable, not precious". While today valuable is a synonym for precious, it originally meant "able to be given a value".
An alpha privative or, rarely, [1] privative a (from Latin alpha prīvātīvum, from Ancient Greek α στερητικόν) is the prefix a-or an-(before vowels) that is used in Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit and Greek and in words borrowed therefrom to express negation or absence, for example the English words of Greek origin atypical, anesthetic, and analgesic.
In linguistics, abessive (abbreviated ABE or ABESS), caritive (abbreviated CAR) [1] and privative (abbreviated PRIV) is the grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun. In English , the corresponding function is expressed by the preposition without or by the suffix -less .
Unlike derivational suffixes, English derivational prefixes typically do not change the lexical category of the base (and are so called class-maintaining 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.
The following is an alphabetical list of Greek and Latin roots, stems, and prefixes commonly used in the English language from P to Z. See also the lists from A to G and from H to O . 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 .
The English language uses many Greek and Latin roots, stems, and prefixes. These roots are listed alphabetically on three pages: Greek and Latin roots from A to G; Greek and Latin roots from H to O; Greek and Latin roots from P to Z. Some of those used in medicine and medical technology are listed in the List of medical roots, suffixes and ...
It can be considered a privative prefix specifically denoting disproximation, i.e. that the resulting word refers to something that has moved away from the core meaning of the base that the prefix is added to. [2] The meaning is the same in French and Greek, but in Greek it also attaches to other word classes such as verbs and adverbs. [3]
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.