Word building: adjectives, nouns and verbs

Word building: adjectives, nouns and verbs

Learning more words and vocabulary is really important to improve your language skills. In English you can make new words from other completely different by using specific endings.

There are nouns from verbs or verbs from nouns or adjectives etcetera. Learning what endings you can put on words means you can expand your vocabulary and say what you mean more easily.

 

You can say one same word by changing how it uses based on the word-ending because this specifies if it is an adjective, noun, or verb.

 

• Nouns often end: -ment (improvement), -ion (investigation), -ness (sadness), -ity (infinity), -ship (leadership), -ece/ance (permanence), -acy (lunacy), -age (marriage), -y (story), -cy (fluency).

           People nouns often end: -er (teacher), -or (advisor), -ist (artist), -ian                             (musician).

• Some verbs end: -ise (modernise), -ate (affiliate), -en (soften), -ify (falsify).

• Adjectives often end: -able (available), -ible (legible), -ive (addictive), -al (banal), -ic (periodic), -ed (amused), -ing (annoying), -ful (wonderful).

For example:

Adjective	Noun	Verb
Strong	strength	stregthen
long	long	longhaul
deep	depth	deepen
short	short	shorten
wide	Width	Widen
high	high	heighten
weak	weakness	weaken
thick	thickness	thicken
flat	flat	flatten