Linglish.net

After posting my other article So many negative prefixes, I received very positive feedback and many readers apparently found the article interesting and useful. Indeed, these little affixes (prefixes and suffixes) can be puzzling when they are similar in meaning but nevertheless non-interchangeable. That makes people ask why they are what they are: is there [...]

In English, we can use a number of prefixes on adjectives to form their opposites. The following pairs come to mind as examples:

typical
atypical

hydrous
anhydrous

social
antisocial

honest
dishonest

legal
illegal

possible
impossible

active
inactive

regular
irregular

existent
nonexistent

kind
unkind

In most cases, these prefixes are not interchangeable, so we do not have *unlegal or *apossible, for instance. Of course, fluent speakers have no problem in using the right prefix for the right [...]

In English when we want to describe something as “capable of doing something”, there is a handy set of adjectives that we can use which end in either -able or -ible. Examples are numerous, to name a few, we have adorable, applicable, curable, observable, operable, portable, probable for -able, and divisible, edible, feasible, legible, permissible, [...]

We all know there are certain irregular verbs which do not quite fit into the normal paradigm for forming the past tense and the past participle. In other words, they do not form the past tense by adding -ed and the past participle by adding -ed/-en. These include verbs like ‘come’: come came come; ‘buy’: [...]

People have a general tendency to be lazy, so they find whatever way they can to save time and energy. In the case of speaking English, they try to compress chunks of words as much as possible to minimize the effort required, and maximize the meanings expressed.
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