The Greek & Latin Roots of English (13 page)

Examples

E. Which English nouns and adjectives are derived from the perfect stems of the following Latin verbs? What is the current usage of each noun or adjective? Use the endings in Section IV, part B. If necessary, consult your dictionary.

Examples

F. Fill in the blank with the literal meaning
⁷
of the italicized word or part of the word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.

56. All his arguments were
fallacious
, but everyone was ____________ by them.

57. His sanctimonious words revealed that he thought he was ____________ than everyone else.

58. They tried to revivify the patient, but it became clear that he was no longer ____________.

59. The mutability of our circumstances shows that our lives are subject to ____________.

60. It is said that “brevity is the soul of wit,” but some speakers never learn to keep their comments ____________.

61. If you have a sedentary job, you will spend a lot of time ____________.

62. The
clamor
in the street grew as the crowd ____________ their demands.

63. She gave the document a
cursory
glance as her eye ____________ down the page.

64. I asked him to verbalize his thoughts, but he couldn't find the ____________.

65. The Maritime Provinces of Canada are situated by the ____________

66. In Roman gladiatorial combat, the chief weapon of the fighters was the ____________.

67. His voracious appetite drove him to ____________ everything in the refrigerator.

68. I was told he had a
mortal
illness, but I hoped he would not ____________.

69. Identify the functions of the italicized words (nouns, adjectives, verbs?) in the following sentence: The
spragid glomularity
of the
stractibulous bananitude oblifected
me.

G. Fill in the blank with a word of the opposite meaning chosen from the list below. Check your dictionary if you are not sure of the meaning.

Footnotes

1
. These Latin endings are actually derived from Greek suffixes and are most often used to form
learned borrowings
(see note 5 below) in English.

2
. A participle is a verb form used as an adjective; the present active participle is formed most often in English by adding the suffix
-ing
to the basic form of the verb—e.g., the running man, the smiling woman, the driving rain. Because Latin participles are adjectives, they can be declined and have number. All present participles belong to the third declension.

3
. The fourth principal part of the verb, from which the perfect passive stem is derived, is also a participle, but passive in meaning, and refers to some event that happened in the past. It is most often expressed in English by the suffixes
-ed
and -en: e.g.,
scrambled eggs
(eggs that have been scrambled),
broken leg
(a leg that has been broken), or a
married man
(a man who has been married). Although the stem has a passive meaning, it can take on an active meaning when a suffix is added (see examples above).

4
. Note that in compounds formed from a noun or adjective together with
-ficio
or
-cipio
, the final
-i
of the verb stem often disappears.

5
. A learned borrowing is a word based on a Greek or Latin root, but given a meaning that it did not have in Latin or Ancient Greek—e.g.,
telephone
, which is formed from the ancient Greek words
tele-
(from a distance) and
phone
(sound). The Greeks of the fifth century BCE obviously did not have telephones, but because of the high esteem in which classical learning was held, the ancient Greek language was used to name this nineteenth-century invention.

6
. Some verbs do not have a perfect passive system.

7
. In this, and in all following exercises, a blank represents the literal definition of the italicized word or part of the word. In the context of these exercises, the literal meaning of a word or part of a word is the original meaning of the Greek or Latin root.

HOW GREEK WORKS