OLOGIES AND ISMS

We all have a childlike love of playing with words, adding bits, Lego-style, to create new ones. And we often wonder where words come from and how they are formed. Michael Quinion’s Ologies and Isms set out to explain the building blocks of English — the beginnings and endings, sometimes the middles — that help create many of the words we use.

Ologies and Isms is now out of print. However, the text has been put online as a free resource, under the simple title Affixes. Improving on the book, it is heavily cross-referenced. It is comprehensively indexed by headword and theme.

Whether you’re a student or practitioner, a teacher of English, an inveterate word user, a logophile who is phobic about technological inexactitudes, or just a seeker-out of linguistic trifles, Affixes will help you to understand the language around you.

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2009. All rights reserved.
Your comments and corrections are welcome.