There are lots of English verbs beginning with the prefix re-, meaning back or again. Words like rebuke, reconcile, refute, rehabilitate, rejuvenate, or renounce. But when you strip off that prefix (re-), as shown above via a word cloud, the root left for describing the first time often looks rather strange. It may have come from other languages like Latin, French, or Old English. Have you ever been buked, futed, juvenated, or nounced?
I got the 1962 edition of the Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language from my bookshelf, and listed roots for most of the transitive ones I found (over 110) which are:
bate, buke, but, call, cant, ceive,
cite, claim, cline, cognize, collect, commend,
compense, concile, coup, cover, create, dact,
deem, develop, direct, double, duce ,fer,
fine, flect, form, fract, fresh, fund,
fuse, fute, gain, gale, gret, habilitate,
hearse, join, juvenate, late, lax, lease,
linquish, mand, mark, member, mind, mit,
model, monstrate, move, nder, new, nounce
pair, peal, peat, pel, place, plenish,
port, pose, present, press, prieve, proach,
produce, prove, pudiate, pulse, pute, quire,
quite, route, scind, scue, seat, sect,
semble, sent, serve, sign, sist, solve,
sorb, spect, state, store, strain, strict,
sume, surface, suscitate, tail, tain, tard,
tort, trace, tract, tread, trench, trieve
vamp, veal, venge, vere, vile, vise,
voke, volve, wire, word, write
Origins for three of them could be the topic for a humorous five-to-seven minute speech at a Toastmasters club. On February 12, 2021 I blogged about the lack of symmetry in two prefixes with a post titled Playing with words: PRE- or POST-?
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