How to Improve Vocabulary with Latin Roots

Confessions of a Word Nerd

I’m going to reveal the extent of my word nerdiness here.   Did you, like me, marvel at how well J.K Rowling chose the names for some of her Harry Potter characters based on their meanings?  For example, Malfoy.  “Mal” means “bad” in Latin, and was that family bad.  Or how about “Voldemort”?  “Mort” means “death”.  Perfect!

As I mentioned in my post on loquacious, my tenth grade English teacher made us learn Latin roots to prepare for the SATs, and I’m so glad he did.  Even if I don’t know a word that I come across in my reading, often I can pick out the Latin roots and guess its meaning.

For example, if I don’t know what interlocutor means, but I do know that “inter” means “between” and “loqui” means speak, I can guess that an interlocutor is one who speaks between people.  The actual definition: one who takes part in dialogue or conversation.

By learning several Latin roots, you can know the definitions of many more words.  But how to learn the roots?

Great resources

Often when you look up a word, you can also find the etymology.  Do this enough, and Latin roots will become familiar.  However, if you want to take a more systematic approach, or you want to teach your children this awesome vocabulary tool, I recommend a workbook series called Word Roots that is published by The Critical Thinking Company.

The Word Roots workbooks demonstrate how to break words down into prefixes, roots, and suffixes.  They also teach tons of Latin roots, such as viv- (life), veri- (truth),  cogi (know).  The series is recommended for fifth graders up.  You can buy the series as paperback books (about $16 each) or just get the software ($43 for the downloadable version).  I have the first book, but with four children, I’m thinking the software might be a good idea…

You can also order flashcards at about $16 a set.  However, I’m a firm believer in “interacting with material”, so if we need flashcards, the kids can make ’em (and probably learn more in the process.)

Yay!  Yet another activity for summer enrichment.  Perhaps my son should work through this series before he continues with the 1100 Words You Need To Know book I got him.

Just the other day, one of my favorite teachers at my kids’ school accused me of being a “lexiphile”.  Of course, that word doesn’t actually exist, but do you know what she meant?

Do you know your Latin roots?  What other resources can you recommend for boosting vocabulary?

Thanks for sharing in the nerdiness today!

Julia

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