A Vocabulary (and History) Lesson

I teach college English--writing, mostly. Because it's college English, I almost never spend any direct instruction time on vocabulary. My students do develop their vocabulary in my classes, but mostly by doing a lot of reading and writing.

I do have one vocabulary lesson, however, which I will give if they ask and aren't satisfied with "read a lot; write a lot." It is this: learn affixes. Affixes are the bits we stick at the beginnings and ends of words to modify their meaning--in other words, prefixes and suffixes. If you learn affixes, your vocabulary increases logarithmically.

The word I most often use to illustrate affixes is "antidisestablismentarianism." Not only does it use a lot of affixes, it's also recognizable and generally regarded as a bit silly, which makes the lesson more memorable.

So I write the word on the board and ask my students to help me break it down. First, we identify the root ("establish") and note that it is a verb. Then we work our way outwards, identifying the affixes and their meanings, until they can successfully decode the word. I'll give you a moment now to try it yourself; the answer is after the break.

Image: A stack of LEGO blocks with the parts of the word
"antidisestablishmentarianism" written on them. CC0 Public Domain.