i.e. the word ‘letter’ is the stem of the word letters, lettering

In some cases this heart cannot be understood by itself as a word, but needs a prefix or suffix to give the word meaning.

Ex:

orthodox.

The root is DOX, which means BELIEF.

ORTHO is a prefix, meaning TRUE.

So together we have the word ORTHODOX, which means true belief.

If you can identify the root of a word, you can frequently make an educated guess as to the meaning of the word.

Ex:

AUDIBLE is a word which means “able to be heard”

Its root is AUDIO.

The ending BLE means, in this instance, “able to”

And by adding prefixes and suffixes, that is, beginnings to words and endings, you can form new words to the root.

INAUDIBLE . The IN means NOT, that is, when something’s inaudible it CAN’T BE HEARD.

THE MAIN IMPORTANCE of being able to detect the root or roots of a word is that you can sometimes figure out what an unfamiliar word means. Look into a new word and try to see in it words you might recognize.

Ex: matrilineal.

This word has two roots: MATRI and LINEAL.

MATRI kind of looks like MOTHER, doesn’t it?

And LINEAL kind of looks like LINE, doesn’t it?

And so if you were to guess the meaning of the word is something like “motherline,” this might help you, so that if you came across this sentence:

“The matrilineal line of descent determines whether a person is a Jew or not.”

In other words, what determines whether a baby is Jewish is whether its mother is Jewish, not its father. (Which would be a PATRILINEAL line of descent.

Now that you can identify and define a root, you can guess what this sentence might mean:

She was the MATRIARCH of the family.

Or this:

One by one, the dominoes fell in LINEAR progression.