Home Β» Segments Β» Behead vs. Decapitate, Be- vs. De-

Behead vs. Decapitate, Be- vs. De-

Carl in Newport Beach, California, wonders why the prefix be- functions so differently in the words behead and befriend. Also, why do the words decapitated and beheaded have different prefixes? And what the be-doing there in bemoan and belabor? Like words themselves, prefixes can have more than one meaning. The prefixes de- and dis- are likely related to Latin and Greek roots meaning “two.” Michael Qunion’s site Affixes.org is an excellent resource for understanding these building blocks of English. This is part of a complete episode.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More from this show

Unparalleled Misalignments

Unparalleled misalignments are pairs of phrases in which the words in one phrase are each synonyms of the words in the other, but the phrases themselves mean different things. For example, the phrase blanket statement can be paired with cover story...

Recent posts