Latin/Greek Roots

a-, ab-, abs-
(Latin: from, away, away from; used as a prefix)
This prefix is normally used with elements of Latin and French origins (abs- usually joins elements beginning with c, q or t).
The form ab- is regularly used before all vowels and h; and it becomes a- before the consonants m, p, and v. The prefix apo- has similar meanings.
This list is a very small sample of the multitude of a-, ab-, abs- prefixes that are available in dictionaries and they are meant to provide as examples; not as all of those that exist.
ab absurdo
From the absurd.
When a person argues ab absurdo, he/she tries to establish the validity of her/his position by pointing out the ridiculousness (absurdity) or foolishness of the opponents' arguements.
Although an argument ab absurdo may "demolish" an opponent's position in debate, it does not necessarily prove the validity of that person's position. The only thing that may be accomplished is that the ab absurdo argument may make the other party seem to be foolish or illogical.
Ab actu ad posse valet illatio.
Inference from what has happened to what will happen is valid.
ab aeterno
Since the beginning of time.
Literally, "from eternity" or of "no date of origin."
ab agendo
Out of action; obsolete or retired.
Ab alio expectes, alteri quod feceris.
Expect from others what you have done to them.

a-, an-

(Greek: a prefix meaning: no, absence of, without, lack of, not)

These prefixes are normally used with elements of Greek origin, a- is used before consonants and an- is used before vowels. It affects the meanings of hundreds of words.

abacterial

Free of bacteria; without bacteria.

abaptism

The absence of baptism; no baptism.

abarognosis

1. Loss of ability to appreciate the weight of objects held in the hand, or to differentiate objects of different weights.
2. Loss of the sense of weight; unaware of weight.
3. When the primary senses are intact, caused by a lesion of the contralateral parietal lobe.

abasia

The inability to walk due to a limitation or absence of muscular coordination; not able to walk.

abiocoen, abiocen

The sum of all the nonliving components of an environment or habitat.

a, an: Grammatical Articles

(confusion exists about usage of "a" and "an" in front of other words)

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The Inconsistent Articles "a" and "an"

Everyone who has a desire to improve his/her English skills should strive to develop fluency and accuracy by having access to information that presents a better understanding of the many confusing words that exist in English.

Learning about confusing words is essential to better communication.

The proper use of "a" and "an"

There is an article on the proper use of "a" and "an" in just about every usage book ever written, although apparently few native speakers of English have any difficulty with them; in fact rarely does anyone think about them in speech.

If there is any difficulty, it is to be found in writing. The basic rules are as follows: Use "a" before a consonant sound; use "an" before a vowel sound. Before a letter or an acronym or before numerals, choose "a" or "an" according to the way the letter or numeral is pronounced: an FDA directive, a United Nations' resolution, a $50.00 bill.

As we might expect, actual usage is more complex than the simple rules tend to lead us to expect. Here are some of the things that actual usage shows:

In line with the basic rule, before words with an initial consonant sound, "a" is the usual application in speech and writing.

Before "h" in an unstressed or weakly stressed syllable, "a" and "an" are both used in writing (an historic, a historic) but an is more usual in speech, whether the "h" is pronounced or not. This variation exists as a result of historical development; in unstressed and weakly stressed syllables, "h" was formerly not pronounced in many words as it is currently pronounced by many people. A few words; such as, historic and (especially in England) hotel, are in transition, and may be found with either a or an. Apparently, people may now choose the article that suits their personal pronunciation preferences with several h words.

Occasionally in modern writing and speech and regularly in the King James Version of the Bible, an is used before "h" in a stressed syllable, as in an hundred. Again, we have the same historical change: many more words were pronounced with a silent initial "h" in the past than are in the present. A few words; such as, heir, hour, and honest, generally have silent "h"; some others, like herb or humble are pronounced both ways. Use a or an according to your personal pronunciation preferences.

Before words beginning with a consonant sound but an orthographic vowel, an is sometimes used in speech and writing (an unique and such an one). This use is less frequent now than in the past.

Before words with an initial vowel sound, an is usual in speech and writing. This is in line with the basic rule.

abacus

(Hebrew > Greek > Latin > Middle English: dust)

The Abacus, a History

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The source of our word abacus, the Greek word abax, is thought to come from Hebrew 'abaq, "dust", although the details of such a transmission are obscure. In postbiblical usage 'abaq meant "sand used as a writing surface". The Greek word abax has as one of its senses "a board sprinkled with sand or dust for drawing geometric diagrams." The difference in form between the Middle English word abacus and its Greek source abax is explained by the fact that Middle English actually borrowed Latin abacus, which came from the Greek genitive form (abakos) of abax.

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abacus (s); abaci (pl)

1. A manual computing device consisting of a frame holding parallel rods strung with movable counters.
2. In architecture, a slab on the top of the capital of a column.

abdomino-, abdomin-, abdomen-

(Latin: belly, venter [the use of "stomach" is considered incorrect for this element])

abdomen

That portion of the body which lies between the lower thorax (chest) and the pelvis; or "the region of the trunk below the diaphragm, containing the largest cavity in the body". Also called belly (popular), venter, and stomach (incorrect). Derived from abdo, abdere, "to hide", and so probably originally referred to the "hidden part of the body".

abdominal, abdominally

Pertaining to the abdomen.

A stomach ache has been defined as an abominable pain in the abdominal area.

—Anonymous

"The stomach (which is in the abdominal area) is lined with thirty-five million glands that produce about three quarts (2.85 liters) of gastric juices daily. Hydrochloric acid makes up roughly five percent of these juices and, together with other acids and various enzymes, constantly works to digest food particles."

—Neil McAleer in his The Body Almanac

abdominalgia

Pain in the abdomen; a belly ache.

abdominoanterior

With the abdomen forward [denoting a position of the fetus in utero].

abdominocentesis

Paracentesis (surgical puncture of the abdominal wall cavity for the aspiration [removal by suction] of peritoneal fluid); i.e., puncturing of the abdomen with a hollow needle or trocar, usually for the purpose of withdrawing fluid.

abdominopelvic

Relating to the abdomen and pelvis, especially the combined abdominal and pelvic cavities.

abdominoplasty

An operation ["belly tuck"] performed on the abdominal wall for esthetic purposes and self esteem; an operation performed on the abdominal wall for esthetic purposes.

-ability

(Latin: a suffix )

Just a few examples out of hundres of words presented as the noun forms of -able; forming nouns of quality from, or corresponding to, adjectives in -able; the quality in an agent that makes an action possible. The suffix -ible has related meanings.

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absorbability

The state or quality of being absorbable; capability of being absorbed.

accountability

1. The state of being accountable, liable, or answerable.
2. Responsibility to someone or for some activity.
3. In education: a policy of holding schools and teachers accountable for students' academic progress by linking such progress with funding for salaries, maintenance, etc.

achievability

The state or condition of being achievable.

affability, affableness

The quality of being affable; readiness to converse or be addressed; especially, by inferiors or equals; courteousness, civility, openness of manner.

applicability

Relevance by virtue of being applicable to the matter at hand.

-able

(Latin: a suffix; capable of, able to, can do)

A suffix that forms adjectives. The suffix -ible has related meanings; expressing ability, capacity, fitness; capable of, fit for, able to be done, can be done, inclined to, tending to, given to.

This list is only a small sample of the thousands of -able words that exist in Englsh.

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abominable

A bad omen; nasty and disgusting; vile; loathsome.

acidifiable

Capable of being converted into, or of combining so as to form, an acid.

acquaintable

Easy to be acquainted with; affable.

affable

Easy of conversation or address; civil and courteous in receiving and responding to the conversation or address of others; especially, inferiors or equals; accostable, courteous, complaisant, benign.

agglutinable

Capable of agglutilnation (the process of union in the healing of a wound).

Ablutions or Bathing, Historical Perspectives

(Latin: abluere, to wash away)

Ablutions from the Past to the Present

• In a leading public health textbook of 1908, W.T. Sedgwick noted that because personal hygiene is a means to control infectious diseases, “the absence of dirt is not merely an esthetic adornment.” He added that cleanliness is “doubtless an acquired taste.”
• Sedgwick’s comment came at a time of transition, when personal hygiene wasn’t a widespread habit.
• Through great periods of European and much of U.S. history, clieanliness was inconvenient, religiously restricted, or just plain out of fashion.
• Living unwashed were saints, the masses, and monarchs alike.
• In response to the debauchery of Roman baths, the early Christian church frequently discouraged cleanliness. “To those that are well, and especially to the young,” Saint Benedict in the sixth century commanded, “bathing shall seldom be permitted.”
• Saint Francis of Assisi considered an unwashed body a stinking badge of piety. Queen Isabella of Castile boasted that she had had only two baths in her life—at birth and before her marriage.
• Colonial America’s leaders deemed bathing impure, since it promoted nudity, which could only lead to promiscuity.
• Laws in Pennsylvania and Virginia either banned or limited bathing. For a time in Philadelphia, anyone who bathed more than once a month faced jail.

Bathing facilities often were not available

• The English of that era really couldn’t bathe even if they wanted to, notes V. W. Greene, a professor of epidemiology at the Ben Gurion Medical School in Beersheva, Israel. “There was no running water, streams were cold and polluted, heating fuel was expensive, and soap was hard to get or heavily taxed. There just weren’t facilities for personal hygiene. Cleanliness wasn’t a part of the folk culture.”
• Through much of the 19th century, adds Greene, Europeans and Americans lived in wretched filth, and many died young of associated diseases.
• Archaeological evidence suggests 5,000-year-old bathing facilities in Gaza. Soaplike material found in clay jars of Babylonian origin has been dated to about 2800 B.C.
• Before the time of Abraham in Middle Eastern desert climes, custom dictated that hosts offer washing water to guests to clean their feet.
• One of the first known bathtubs comes from Minoan Crete that was found in the palace at Knossos and is dated about 1700 B.C.
• The palace plumbing system had terra-cotta pipes that were jointed and cemented together and were tapered at one end to give water a shooting action to prevent the buildup of clogging sediment. Their technology put Minoans in the hydrological vanguard.

The ancients had their hygienic practices

• The ancient Egyptians didn’t develop such plumbing, but they definitely liked hygiene which was evident in their use of fresh linen and body ointments, skin condioners, and deodorants of the day.
• The Greeks apparently prized cleanliness. Although they apparently didn’t use soap, Greeks anointed their bodies with oil and ashes, scrubbed with blocks of pumice or sand, and scraped themselves clean with a curved metal instrument called a “strigil”. Immersion in water and anointment with olive oil followed their ablutions.
• At its peak of ablutive excess, it may have seemed that all of Rome indulged in the baths. In the fourth century A.D., the city had eleven large and magnificent public bathhouses, more than 1,350 public fountains and cisterns, and many hundreds of private baths.
• Served by thirteen aqueducts, Rome’s per-capita daily water consumption averaged about 300 gallons, nearly what an American family of four uses today.
• Roman baths usually opened at midday, just as sportsmen finished their games or exercises. A bather first entered the “tepidarium”, a moderately warm room for sweating and lingering.
• Next came the “calidarium”, a hotter room for greater sweating, or perhaps the ultrahot "laconicum".
• In these the bather doused himself with copious quantities of warm, tepid, or cold water.
• Scraped off with a strigil, sponged and reanointed, the Roman concluded the process by plunging into the cool and refreshing pool of the “frigitarium”.
• Rome’s obsession with bathing is said to be a factor that helped send the empire down the drain.

Early Christian leaders condemned bathing as unspiritual

• “The father’s of the early church equated bodily cleanliness with the luxuries, materialism, paganism and what’s been called ‘the monstrous sensualities’ of Rome,” explains Professor Greene.
• Within a few centuries, the public and private sanitation practices of Greece and Rome were forgotten; or, as Greene adds, were “deliberately repressed.”
• Europe during the Middle Ages, it’s often been said, went a thousand years without a bath.
• Gregory the Great, the first monk to become pope, allowed Sunday baths and even commended them, so long as they didn’t become a “time-wasting luxury.”
• Guardians of culture and knowledge during the Dark Ages, Europe’s monasteries also preserved some of Rome’s hydrological technology and cleanliness habits.
• Elaborate plumbing laid in 1150 served the Christchurch Monastery at Canterbury, with settling tanks to purify water, and branches that fed the kitchen, the laver, and the washouse.
• Greene stated, “People always talk about the good old days, before pesticides and pollution; but in the good old days of Europe and the United States, people lived in filth, with human and animal fecal matter all around. The rivers were filthy. Clothing was infested with vermin.”

Cleanliness leads to better health

• Although scholars point to advances in medical science; such as, vaccines and antibiotics, as the major factors in turning the tide against disease, the changes in personal and domestic hygiene should be given considerable credit for improvements in better health conditions.
• “For one thing,” Greene explains, “pasteurization and vaccines didn’t really come along until the mortality decline was well established. That’s not to say vaccines weren’t important. But nearly 40 diseases are transmitted by feces, urine, and other secretions on contaminated hands or other objects. The greatest cause of fatal infant diarrhea came from mothers who went to the toilet, didn’t wash their hands and passed along intestinal bacteria to their babies.”
• Body ordor is not caused by the human body or sweat itself. The skin has more than two million sweat glands, and the perspiration that comes from the abundant eccrine sweat glands is fundamentally clear and odorless.
• Common skin flora, consisting of several kinds of benign bacteria, feed off the secretions and skin particles on the body and clothing. In the process of eating and eliminating waste, the bacteria cause the stench.
• Most people rely on soap and water to get rid of the sweat that bacteria eat. Since soap contains fats, oils, and alkali; it loosens the bonds that hold dirt, oil, and bacteria to the skin and suspends them in water.
• Some experts say that the way to get really clean is to soak and to wash in a bathtub and then to shower off the “floating soap and body-oil slick” that clings to the body when a person stands up in the tub.
• Even in our “modern age”, too many people who should know better, do not wash their hands after using a toilet.
• Cleanliness, via ablutions, is one of the most important ways to maintain good health.

abluto-, ablut-

(Latin: washing; especially as a ritual; cleansing)

From Latin ab- and luere, "to wash" which is related to lavare, "to wash"

abluent

1. Serving to cleanse.
2. A cleansing agent; a detergent.

ablution

1. A cleansing of the body, especially in a religious ceremony.
2. The liquid used in such a washing.

ablutionary

1. Of or pertaining to washing the body, or parts of it.
2. Cleansing the body by washing; especially, ritual washing of the hands, etc.

ablutions

This may refer to the practice of removing sins, diseases or earthly defilements through the use of ritual washing, or the practice of using ritual washing as one part of a ceremony to remove sin or disease.

ablutomania

1. An obsessional preoccupation with cleanliness, washing, or bathing, often accompanied by compulsive rituals.

-ably, a suffix;

(able manner, capably)

In an able manner, or capably; forming adverbs corresponding to adjectives in -able.

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adorably

amiably

Friendly and agreeable in disposition; good-natured and likeable.

amicably

comfortably

comparably

conceivably

creditably

despicably

determinably

durably

Capable of withstanding wear or decay.

formidably

habitably

incomparably

justifiably

laudably

Deserving praise.

abort-, aborti-

(Latin: miscarry, pass away, perish by an untimely birth)

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abort, aborted, aborting

1. To give birth before the fetus is viable; have a miscarriage; to fail to be completed.
2. To cut short because of some failure in equipment: "To abort a flight because of radio failure."
3. Originally, "to set" or "to disappear" (as the sun). Composed of ab-, "from" and oriri- "to arise"; the part of the sky, or the world, in which the sun rises; the East.

aborticide

The killing of a fetus during an abortion.

aborticide, feticide

The killing of a fetus.

abortifacient

A drug or device that causes an abortion or kills the fetus before birth.

abortion, abortional

1. Expulsion of a fetus from the womb before it is viable; however, medical personnel will also use this term for a miscarriage, which is involuntary, calling it a "spontaneous abortion".
2. Induced termination of pregnancy before the fetus is capable of independent survival.
3. Anything that fails to develop, progress, or mature; such as, a design, project, or a badly developed plan, etc.
4. To miscarry, to disappear.
4. Etymology: ab-, "from, away from" and oriri, "to come into being, to rise, to be born".

aboulo-, aboul-, abulo-, abul-

(Greek: irresolution, indecision, loss or defect of the ability to make decisions)

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aboulia, abulia

1. Loss or impairment of the ability to perform voluntary actions or to make decisions.
2. Loss of will-power, as a mental disorder.
3. Reduction in speech, movement, thought, and emotional reaction; a common result of bilateral frontal lobe disease.

aboulias, abulias

Loss or impairment of the ability to make decisions or act independently.

aboulic, abulic

Relating to or suffering from aboulia/abulia.

aboulomania, abulomania

A mental disorder in which there is a loss of will-power.

abulia, abulic

1. Absence of willpower or wishpower; the term implies that the subject has a desire to do something but the desire is without power or energy.
2. A disorder marked by the partial or total inability to make decisions.