(This is a special Thanksgiving post to celebrate just how much all of us at Chariot Learning plan to eat today! If you really want to get in touch with the meaning of Thanksgiving, check out the Roots2Words Root of the Week: GRAT-.)
Looking to add a lot more words your personal lexicon or just want to better understand the English language? Learning the common roots, prefixes, and suffixes that so many of our words are based on gives you the tools to recognize familiar words or decode unfamiliar words. That’s the Roots2Words way!
Your Roots2Words Affix of the Week is -VORE:
-VORE is a suffix meaning one who eats.
(Suffixes appear at the end of words)
**EXAMPLES**
carnivore (noun) – one who eats meat or flesh; a predator
BREAKDOWN: CARN- (flesh) + -VORE (one who eats)
folivore (noun) – one who eats leaves
BREAKDOWN: FOL- (leaf) + -VORE (one who eats)
fructivore (noun) – one who eats fruit
BREAKDOWN: FRUCT- (fruit) + -VORE (one who eats)
herbivore (noun) – one who eats plants
BREAKDOWN: HERB- (plant) + -VORE (one who eats)
locavore (noun) – one who eats food grown or produced locally
BREAKDOWN: LOC- (place) + -VORE (one who eats)
omnivore (noun) – one who eats both plants and animals; someone with a varied diet
BREAKDOWN: OMNI- (all) + -VORE (one who eats)
ossivore (noun) – one who eats bones
BREAKDOWN: OS- (bone) + -VORE (one who eats)
**INTERESTING VARIATIONS**
The suffix –VOROUS is combined with other roots to create adjectives describing organisms that eat certain things:
- A carnivore is carnivorous.
- An herbivore is herbivorous.
- An omnivore is omnivorous.
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Mike Bergin