Tuesday, December 24, 2024

A Distraction of Prefixes

Zac's current bedtime story is Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray (1943 Newbery winner). Yesterday I ran across a word I didn't know: quintain. A jousting term, it clearly comes from the Latin word for five.

So this got me thinking about prefixes, and distracted me from what I'm supposed to be doing (which is wrapping Christmas presents). When we do the Infinity Street lesson in the grade 2 Column Algorithms & Place Value block, I always have to cover lots of number prefixes. It would be nice to have a list of related words that I could refer to, organized and ready to go.


Introducing the Equals Sign ("Is the Same As") and Infinity


We have houses and mailboxes up to septillion, and slips of paper with the names of all of the families up to novemdecillion

    Simple
    Thousand
    Million
    Billion
    Trillion
    Quadrillion
    Quintillion
    Sextillion
    Septillion
    Octillion
    Nonillion
    Decillion
    Undecillion
    Duodecillion
    Tredecillion
    Quattuordecillion
    Quindecillion
    Sexdecillion
    Septendecillion
    Octodecillion
    Novemdecillion


I like to give them the slips of paper after septillion and have them figure out how to put them in order! When it comes to talking through the prefixes, you can refer to the months of the year as a way to help but this can get surprisingly tricky since September is no longer month #7, October is no longer month #8, etc. I remember finding this irritating when I was a child!

They find out the reason for this in grade 3 Clocks & Calendars, so you can plant the seeds of, "I wonder..."

I have actually found Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin by Lloyd Moss to be extremely useful, especially for clarifying that the word is < sext > and not < sex > when representing six (trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet, nonet).


Here is what I have so far, and I'd be happy to add your suggestions:

Million

    'milli' means a thousand; a million is a thousand thousands

    millimeter, milliliter, milligram

    millipede

    millefiori (in glasswork)


Billion


Trillion


Quadrillion

    4

    quadriceps

    quadriplegic

    quadrilateral

    quadrangle (in architecture)

    quadrant (in coordinate graphing)

    quadruple

    quadruplet
    It's So Amazing!, p.55


Quintillion


Sextillion


Septillion


Octillion


Nonillion


Decillion


Actually, having gone all the way through this list several times, I think I'm changing my mind about these being prefixes. The shared word part in so many of these numbers is < -illion >, which seems to be acting as a suffix.

Which means that bi, tri, quadr, quint, sext, sept, oct, non, and dec are bases and not prefixes here? Could these be compound words? I wonder...

In quintet, sextet, septet, octet, and nonet, < -et > is very clearly a suffix!

If < -et > is a suffix, then < quint > is a base, i.e. quint + et ----> quintet

Etymonline describes < bi- > simply as a "word-forming element." Hmm.


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