BASIC VOCABULARY

Made by:
Ageung Darajat M.Pd

SEMESTER 1
 WORD FORMATION
(Renyaan, 1986):
If you understand the way in which many English words
are formed, it is easy for you learn the use and the
meaning of words in English. A great number of words in
English are developed by combining word elements.
Example:
Prefix, root word (stem), and suffix.
The word “Television” is constructed from “tele”(prefix)
+ vis (root) + ion (suffix).
“Tele” means “far”; “vis” means “sight”; and “ion”
means condition or state of. Thus, television means the
process of transmitting the view of events, plays, etc.
The English language frequently uses this method of word
formation. Notice the numerous words formed on the
root word “act” as follows.
Prefix + act : Act + suffix: Prefix + act + suffix
-Transact Action Reaction
-Interact Active Enactment
-Reenact Actively Reenactment
-React Actionless Reactor
-Enact Actable Reactive
Activity Reactivate
Activate Interaction
Activation Transaction
Actor Inactive
Actress
A. Prefixes
The word “prefix” is composed of a root and a prefix. It is
derived from the Latin “figere” meaning to “put” or “fix”
and the Latin prefix “prae” meaning “before or at the
beginning of”. A prefix is a meaning unit of one or more
syllables added to the beginning of a root to form a new
word.

Examples:
Mis + manage  Mismanage
Inter + change  Interchange
Dis + agree  Disagree
Un + happy  Unhappy

Since prefixes comes mainly from Anglo-Saxon (Old

English), Latin, and Ancient Greek, the following prefixes
are divided according to their origins.
Use these words to write your sentences. For certain
words their meanings are not provided, so you must
look up the meanings in your dictionary.

1. Anglo-Saxon Prefixes
a. FORE-: “beforehand”, “front”, “before”, “chief”
Example:
Word Meaning Illustrative Sentence
Forearm parts of the Tomas Americo raised
arm from the his forearm to protect
wrist to the face from his opponents
elbow blows.
b. MIS-: “bad”, “badly”, “wrong”, “wrongly”
Example:
Word Meaning Illustrative Sentence
Mismanage manage badly The whole business
or wrongly had been entirely mis
managed.
c. OUT-: “beyond”, “out”, “more than”, “longer
faster”, “better than”.
Example:
Word Meaning Illustrative Sentence
Outrun run faster than; His ambition outran
go beyond. his ability.
d. OVER-: “too”, “excessively”, “over”, “beyond”
Example:
Word Meaning Illustrative Sentence
Overdose quantity of Do not take more of
medicine the medicine the doc
beyond what tor ordered; an over
to be taken at dose maybe danger-
one time or in ous.
a given period;
too big a dose.
e. UN-: “not”, “lack of”, “do the opposite of”,
“remove or release from”
Example:
Un + abridge  unabridged

Word Meaning Illustrative Sentence

Unabridged not abridged; Through the abridged
not made short dictionary is convenient
er; complete. to use, it contains far –
fewer definitions than
unabridged dictionary.
f. UNDER-: “beneath”, “lower”, “insufficiently”
Example:
Under + age  underage

Word Meaning Illustrative Sentence

Underage below the This film is not for
customary the underage children.
or required
age.
g. UP-: “upward”
Example:
Up + turn  upturn
Meaning Illustrative Sentence
Upward turn toward Many businessmen report -
better condition a slowdown in sales for Octo-
ber, but confidently expect an
upturn with the approach of –
Chirstmas.

h. WITH-: “back”, ”away”, ”against”

Example:
With + draw  withdraw
 Meaning Illustrative Sentence
Take away, take back Tom is my principal backer;
if he withdraws his support,
I don’t see how I can elected
2. Latin Prefixes
Then, the other examples of prefixes, especially
Latin – Prefix are following below, such as:
Latin- Prefix:
-AB-, A-, ABS- : “from”; “away”; “off”.
-AD - : “toward”; “near”.
-ANTE - : “before”.
-POST - : “after”.
-BI - : “two”.
-SEMI - : “half”; “partly”.
Latin- Prefix:
-E-,EX- : “out”; “from”; “away”.
-IN -, IM-, : “in”; “into”; “on”; “against”;
“over”.(negative prefixes)
-EXTRA - : “outside”.
-INTRA - : “within”.
-INTER - : “between”.
-IN-, IL -, IM-, IR-, : “not”; “un”. (negative prefixes)
-BENE : “good”, “well”.
-MAL-, MALE- : “evil”; “ill”; “bad”; “badly”.
-DE- : “down”; “down from”; “ opposite of”
-DIS-: “opposite of”; “differently”; “apart”; “away”.
(negative prefixes)
-SE-: “apart”.
The examples of Latin – Prefix sentence are :
1. Abdicate: formally remove oneself from; give up;
surrender; relinguish.
E.g:
“The old king abdicated his thrown and went into
retirement.”

2. Adapt: adjust, suit, fit; make suitable for different use;

modify.
E.g:
“People who work at night have to adapt themselves to
sleeping in the daytime.”

3. Anteroom: antechamber; waiting room; room placed before

and forming an entrance to another.
 E.g:
“When the physician is still busy, the nurse asks the
patients to wait in the anteroom.”
4.Postgarduate: having to do with study after
graduation from high school or college.
E.g:
“She has passed her postgraduate program in Solo.”

5.Bimonthly: occuring every two months.

E.g:
“I was ordered to contact him bimonthly.”
6.Eminent: standing out; conspicuous;
distinguished;noteworthy.
E.g:
“Mr. Mochtar is one of the Indonesian eminent
politicians.”

7.Impossible: not possible.

E.g:
“I was ordered to do the impossible work.”

8.Extraculicular: outside the regular curriculum.

E.g:
“My sister is taking the marching band as her
extraculicular in her school. ”
9.Intramural: within the walls or boundaries (of a
school, college, etc) .
E.g:
“Our residents are intramural among the area.”

10.Controversy: dispute; debate; quarrel.

E.g:
“This news is being controversy for the politicians .”

11.Intermission : pause between period of activity;

interval; interruption.
E.g:
“During the intermission between the first and
second acts, you will have a change to buy
refreshments . ”
12.Immature: not mature; not fully grown or
developed.
E.g:
“Don’t use such a baby talk1 People will think you
are mentally immature.”

13.Benefit: good things.

E.g:
“This meeting is being benefit for the participants.”

14.Malefactor:offender; evildoer; criminal.

E.g:
“Shortly, after the crime, the malefactor was
apprehended and turned over to the police.”
15.Demolish: pull or tear down; destroy.
E.g:
“A wrecking crew is demolishing the old building.”

16.Discredit: disbelieve, refuse to trust.

E.g:
“The parents discredited the child’s story, since he
was in the habit of telling falsehoods .”

17.Secure: apart or free from care, fear or worry,

confident; and safe against loss; attack, or danger.
E.g:
“The police officers were being secure the area that
happened of riot.”
3. Greek Prefixes
The other examples of prefixes, especially Greek –
Prefix are following below, such as:
Greek- Prefix:
•-AUT-, ANTO- : “self”.
•-PAN-, PANTO- : “all”; “complete”.
•-ANT-, ANTI- : “opposite”; “against”.
•-PROT -, PROTO-: “first”.

The examples of Greek – Latin sentence are:

1. Automatic: acting by itself; self regulating.
E.g:
“You do not have to defrost this refrigerator because it
is equipped with an automatic defroster.”
2. Panorama: complete, unobstructed view.
E.g:
“Bali island is very nice panorama when we see
the sun set from the beach.”

3. Antidote: remedy that acts against the effects of a

poison.
E.g:
“That doctor needs the antidote to inject her
patient curing the Ebola.”

4. Protagonist: the leading (first) character in a play,

novel, or story.
 E.g:
“Brutus is the protagonist in Shakespeare’s
JULIUS CAESAR, and Antony is the antagonist.”

B. Suffixes
The word “suffix” is a meaning unit added at the
end of a word to change its meaning. It comes from
the Latin word “sub” and “figere” = to add on. The
meaning of suffixes is general. They primary tell you
whether a word is used as a verb, an adjective, an
adverb, or a noun.
(Rachmadie, 1986)
Suffixes:
- age  French  Noun-Marker.
- al  French  Noun-Marker; Adjective Marker.
- ance  French  Noun-Marker.
- ancy French  Noun-Marker.
- ence  French  Noun-Marker.
- cy  Latin  Noun-Marker.
- dem  Anglo-Saxon  Noun-Marker.
- ee  French  Noun-Marker (object of an action).
- er  Latin  Noun-Marker (subject of an action).
- ess  French  Noun-Marker (to form feminine
noun).
- full  Anglo-Saxon  1. adjective marker denoting
full of, abounding in, cha –
racterized by).
2. noun- marker denoting -
quantity that would fill.
-ism  French(Latin)  noun-marker (act of doing; -
manner of action or conduct;
state; condition or fact of –
being; characteristic of).
-ist  French, Latin or Greek  noun-marker
(agentive).
- let French noun-marker having a diminutive
force.
- ly  Anglo-Saxon  1. adjective marker (like in -
appearance, manner or nature
; characteristic of).
2. adverb-marker.
- ment French  Noun-Marker.
- ness  Anglo-Saxon  Noun-Marker denoting state,-
condition, quality, or degree.
- ship  Anglo-Saxon  Noun-Marker denoting state,-
condition, or quality.
(https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/suffixes.
htm)

A suffix is a group of letters placed at the end of a

word to make a new word. A suffix can make a new
word in one of two ways:
1. inflectional (grammatical): for example, changing
singular to plural (dog > dogs), or changing
present tense to past tense (walk > walked). In
this case, the basic meaning of the word does not
change.
2. derivational (the new word has a new meaning,
"derived" from the original word): for example,
teach > teacher or care > careful
Inflectional suffixes do not change the meaning
of the original word. So in "Every day I walk to
school" and "Yesterday I walked to school", the
words walk and walked have the same basic
meaning.
In "I have one car" and "I have two cars", the
basic meaning of the words car and cars is
exactly the same. In these cases, the suffix is
added simply for grammatical "correctness".

Look at these examples:

 Example
Grammatical Example
Suffix Original
Change Suffixed Word
Word
-s plural dog dogs
-en plural (irregular) ox oxen

3rd person singular

-s like he likes
present
past tense he worked
-ed work
past participle he has worked
past participle
-en eat he has eaten
(irregular)
continuous/progres
-ing sleep he is sleeping
sive
-er comparative big bigger
-est superlative big the biggest
Derivational suffixes , the new word has a new
meaning, and is usually a different part of speech. But
the new meaning is related to the old meaning - it is
"derived" from the old meaning.

We can add more than one suffix, as in this example:

derive (verb) + tion = derivation (noun) + al =
derivational (adjective).

There are several hundred derivational suffixes. Here

are some of the more common ones:
 Example Example
Suffix Making Original Word Suffixed Word
explore exploration
-ation hesitate hesitation
persuade persuasion
-sion divide division
-er teach teacher
-cian music musician
-ess Nouns god goddess
-ness sad sadness
-al arrive arrival
-ary diction dictionary
-ment treat treatment
jealous jealousy
-y
victor victory
 Example Example
Suffix Making Original Suffixed
Word Word
-al accident accidental
-ary imagine imaginary
-able tax taxable
-ly adjectives brother brotherly
-y ease easy
sorrow sorrowful
-ful
forget forgetful
-ly adverbs helpful helpfully
terror terrorize
-ize
verbs private privatize
-ate hyphen hyphenate
The examples of suffixes in the sentence are:

1. The village was completely destroyed.

2. He arrived late.
3. They decided to stop.

C. DERIVATIONAL AFFIXES
(Rachmadie, 1986)
Not all affixes have the same function when attached
to the root or base. When the affixes change the class
of the root or base then they are usually called
Derivational affixes.
Look at the diagram below!
 ROOT/BASE AFFIX NEW WORDS

1) HAPPY - NESS HAPPINESS

2) QUICK - LY QUICKLY
3) DANGER EN – ENDANGER
4) WIDE - EN WIDEN

The prefix en- and the suffixes – ness, -ly, and –en in
the examples above are usually called derivational
affixes because – ness changes an adjective (happy)
into a noun (happiness); - ly changes an adjective
(quick) into an adverb (quickly); en- changes a noun
into a verb (endanger) and –en changes an adjective
(wide) into a verb (widen).
In this way we will know the extension of meaning, if
any, and its part of speech. Such a study of words is
called the derivational paradigm. The following
examples are taken from the Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary at random.
NOUN VERB ADJECTIVE ADVERB

Beauty Beautify Beautiful Beautifully

Quickness Quicken Quick Quickly
Exclusion Exclude Exclusive Exclusively
Exclusiveness
Exclusionist
Exclusionism
Excitement Excite Exciting Excitingly
Exciter Excited Excitedly
 NOUN VERB ADJECTIVE ADVERB

Fright Frighten Frightful Frightfully

Frightfulness Frightened Frighteningly
Frightener
Exhaustion Exhaust
Exhaustibility Exhaustible Exhaustively
Exhaustiveness Exhaustive
Exhaustlessness Exhaustless Exhaustlessly
Exhauster Exhausted
D. INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES (Rachmadie, 1986)
Some affixes when we attached to the do not create
new words. They only have certain grammatical
functions. These affixes are usually called
Inflectional Affixes. In English we have Inflectional
Affixes to indicate the following:
1). Plural forms, such as:
-s  book  books
glass  glasses
-en  ox  oxen
child  children
fish  fish
2). Possessions, such as:
John’s book.
John and Mary’s house.
A dog’s tail.
3). Third singular verb marker, for examples:
Mother always cooks rice.
Jack goes to school.
He never watches TV.
4). Tense markers, such as:
He worked hard yesterday. (past tense)
I have repeated the lesson. (past participle)
We are studying English. (present progressive)
5). Pronouns have different forms in term of function.
As a subject : She is a teacher.
As an object : I met her yesterday.
As possessive : Is this bag hers? Yes, it’s her bag.

Many English words contain several derivational

affixes. Look at the examples below.
(1) un- happy -ly  unhappily.
act -ive -ly  actively.
(2) dis- able -ity  disability.
(3) anti cleric -al -ism  anticlericalsim.
In examples number 1, 2, and 3 there are two
derivational affixes in each new word. In actively you
have two suffixes while in unhappily and disability
you have a prefix and a suffix. In example number 4
you have one prefix and two suffixes attached to the
root cleric. In English, however, there is usually only
one inflectional affix in each word. E.g.

1. hat -s  hats
2. walk -ed walked

The only exception is –s “plural” and –s “possessive”

for we can say the cats ‘food where cats’ is both
plural and possessive in meaning.
Derivational affixes occur next to the root or next to
another derivational affix. Inflectional affixes, on the
other hand, in English at the very end of a word,
following any derivational affixes that may be
present. Look at the diagram below where DA
(derivational affix) stands for derivational affixes and
IA (inflectional affix).
DA ROOT DA DA IA NEW WORDS
(BASE)

il- Legal -ly Illegally

in- Act -ive -ly Inactively
Fertile -ize -s Fertilizes
Fertile -ize -ed Fertilized
Fertile -ize -er -s Fertilizers
DA ROOT DA DA IA NEW WORDS
(BASE)

Organ -ize -s Organizes

Organ -ize -ed Organized
Organ -ize -ion -s Organizations

E. WORDS WITH MULTIPLE MEANINGS SYNONYMS

ANTONYMS (Rachmadie, 1986)
Sometimes difficult for us to identify the meaning of
an English word in isolation. The fact is that there
are many English words that have more than one
meaning. These words are called words with
multiple meanings. You should know some familiar
English words with various meanings in order to -
avoid misunderstanding when you are involved in
both oral and written communication.

In its passive communication, when you just listen

to what other person is speaking or when you read
what he or she has written, you are required to have
more vocabulary power. To know synonym of
certain words is quite important because writers of
English are taught to use synonyms to avoid
boredom in the part of the readers. The opposite of
synonym is antonym and both synonym and
antonym will really help you increase your
vocabulary.
 MULTIPLE MEANING

Most English words that you see everyday have

several different meanings. You have less number of
English words with only one meaning for each.
Study the following pairs:

A. can opener B. spring

violin mark
dentist nice
kilometer good
kilogram air
abattoir round
post-office neck
algebra rare
You can be sure that in column A each word has
normally one meaning only.
However, the words in column B are still ambiguous
in terms of meaning. The meaning of each word in
column B will be decided by the context in which it is
used. Take the work “spring” for example:

1. I like spring better than summer. (musim semi)

2. There are sulphuric hot springs around here.
(mata air)
3. My watch doesn’t work, I’m afraid its spring is
broken. (per)
4. They have spring to their feet when they hear the
bell for dinner.(melompat)
Have some other examples of the word “mark”. Try
to find the meaning of “mark” in the following
sentences:
1. The short stop’s throw was way off the
mark.(target)
2. Paying attention to someone is a mark of
courtesy. (sign)
3. Mark these underlined word well. (pay
attention)
4. Sarengat, our sprinter, was very quickly getting
off the mark. (starting line)
 SYNONYMS
A Synonym is a word having the same or nearly the
same meaning as another word in the same
language.
A. Examples of synonym in Nouns:
Sadness  Unhappiness
Appearance  Look
Bargain  Agreement
Change  Possibility
Disturbance  Confusion
B. Examples of synonym in Verbs:
Admit  Confess
Bind  Tie
Classify  Arrange
 Declare  State
Gain  Win
C. Examples of synonym in Adjectives:
Sad  Unhappy
Anxious  Worried
Comfortable  Pleasant
Confidential  Secret
Curious  Strange
D. Examples of synonym in Adverbs:
Sadly  Unhappily
Absolutely  Entirely
Altogether  Completely
Decidedly  Certainly
Gratefully  Thankfully
 ANTONYMS

A Antonym is just the opposite of a synonym,

namely an antonym is a word expressing an idea
directly opposite to that of another word in the
same language.
A. Examples of antonym in Nouns:
Sadness  Happiness
Saint  Sinner
Balance  Unsteadiness
Birth  Death
Cowardice  Bravery
B. Examples of antonym in Verbs:
Come  Go
Arrive  Depart
 Live  Die
Accept  Refuse
C. Examples of antonym in Adjectives:
Sad  Happy
Artificial  Natural
Short  Tall
Complicated  Simple
Curious  Uninterested
D. Examples of antonym in Adverbs:
Sadly  Happily
Conveniently  Unsuitably
Successfully  Unsuccessfully
Politely  Impolitely
Intentionally  Accidentally
 Sources:
• Wikipedia retrieved https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/suffixes.htm
(Date: August 18, 2014).
• Rachmadie,S. Drs, M.A 1986, Materi Pokok Vocabulary PING 4432 Modul 1-6.
Depdikbud – Penerbit Karunika Jakarta. Universitas Terbuka.
• Renyaan, Max. Drs 1986, Materi Pokok Vocabulary PING 2232 Modul 1-3.
Depdikbud – Penerbit Karunika Jakarta. Universitas Terbuka.