If I succeeded in my discartoon,
you should have fallen asleep from boredom before you reached this sentence. But if you’re still awake, let’s discuss prefixes, shall we?
English is a funny language that is full of rules that seem to work about 80% of the time. Take prefixes for example.
A prefix as defined by the Oxford dictionary is “a letter or group of letters added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning.” So dis means not and by placing it in front of say like, changes the meaning to not like. The key thing to note here is that when you remove the dis from dislike, you end up with a recognisable word – like. But here’s the 20% catch – you can’t take this approach to all words starting with dis. Take the following:
- Discreet – What I’m about to tell you is no secret. Please be creet about this information and share with everyone you meet”
- Disrupt – The dogs stopped barking allowing me to sleep rupted all night long.