Word Formation Examples & Exercises

These word formation examples show how English words change form. They demonstrate the use of many of the word endings in the List of Suffixes with examples from different word families.

Study the various related words in each family. Then check your understanding of how to use those words with a gap-fill exercise.

Detailed Word Formation Examples

Word Formation Examples & Exercises. Pictures: joining two puzzle pieces to form the word 'achievement' and a child building with blocks.

To emphasize means to call attention to something or show that it is important. We can put emphasis on an idea by stressing its value or by explaining it thoroughly. 

Speaking emphatically is stating something in a definite (and often loud) way. It leaves no room for uncertainty.

To employ usually means to give a job to someone—to pay them for their work. 

The nouns are employment (or unemployment), employer for a person who gives jobs to people, and employee for a person who receives work. Adjectives are employed (or unemployed) and (un)employable.

To neglect is to not find the time to take care of your responsibilities. (If you neglect your garden, the grass and weeds will grow and it may become a jungle, or plants may die for lack of water.) Someone who often neglects parts of his or her job is negligent. His negligence can cause the company problems.

Tolerant is an adjective meaning 'willing to accept different people or ideas.' (Intolerant means being unwilling to accept differences.) Its adverb is tolerantly. Its verb is to tolerate, and its nouns are toleration, tolerance, and intolerance.

(In)tolerable means (un)bearable. It describes conditions a person can (or if negative cannot) tolerate. 

To verify is to find out or prove if something is true. (It comes from French and Latin: true + make). We can make four adjectives from it. Verifiable is something that can be checked and confirmed as true. Unverifiable is something that cannot be proved.Verified is something that has been checked or shown to be true, and unverified is something that has not. There is also a noun: verification.

More Word Formation Examples

Achievement is a noun meaning an accomplishment: having reached a goal. Can you guess the verb? (Hint: remove the noun-making suffix.)

Take the verb (achieve) and add the suffix -er to get the noun for a person who achieves. (Add the prefix over- for a person who is too focused on achievement. An underachiever is a person who is not reaching his potential.) Add the suffix -able to the verb for one adjective, and add the negative prefix un- to that for a second adjective.

We can use the verb to excite to form three kinds of adjectives (with ‘–able,’ ’-ed,’ and ‘–ing’), and their negatives. It also is the base for two adverbs ( ‘excitably’ and ‘excitedly.’) We can do the same with many other verbs.

Add ‘–ment’ to the verb for one noun, and ‘–ability’ for another. That’s 11 words made from excite—and if you understand suffixes you should be able to guess their meanings.

(Actually, there are quite a few more if you add the similar forms of ‘overexcite.’ There is also the noun ‘excitation,’ which often refers to electrical current or nerve stimulation.

Adjectives formed with  -ing (the present participle) describe causes. Adjectives formed with -ed describe the feelings they cause. Examples: An exciting trip makes a child excited. People are (unsurprisingly!) surprised by surprising news. Boring teachers often have bored students, and terrifying experiences leave people terrified.

The verb (or noun) ‘help´ demonstrates other common endings for adjectives and for the adverbs and nouns made from them. Helpless means without help; helpful means giving a lot of help (“full” of help.) 

From these, we get the adverbs helplessly or helpfully and the nouns helplessness or helpfulness. (A man with a broken arm looked on helplessly as his friend tried to lift a heavy box. He appreciated  the helpfulness of his neighbor, who picked up the other end of the box.)

Similar word builder formations: thought> thoughtful> thoughtfully or thoughtfulness or thought> thoughtless> thoughtlessly.  Meaning> meaningful (and meaningfully) or meaningless. Rest> restful or restless> restlessly or restlessness. Sleep> sleepless> sleeplessly, tire>tired or tireless> tirelessly,word>wordless> wordlessly, etc.

Word Formation (Gapfill) Exercises

Fill in each gap by typing in the best word from the word family listed for each number. For #1. use forms of ‘excite’, 2. achieve, 3. surprise, 4. tolerate, 5. rest, 6. employ, 7. help, 8. emphasize, 9.neglect, 10 tire. 

(Look at the word formation examples above if you are not sure which form to use. See the yellow box for the forms of surprise.) Then press “check” to see if your answers are correct. If not, try again. Be sure to check your spellings.

Example: 1. Calm people like Jane are not usually excitable, but she chattered excitedly about her new boyfriend.

2. He’s a real . He gets upset if he gets 99% on a test!

3A. Many people like , but they don’t like to be by an unexpected test.

3B. A (unexpectedly) large percentage of patients at the new hospital chose private rooms.

4. My brother believes it’s important to be , or at least respectful, of other people’s beliefs. . He is willing to listen to people even when he disagrees with them. He says many wars have been caused by religious .

5. The candidate was so excited that he paced the floor as the TV reported the election results.

6. Multi-national corporations thousands of people in many countries. Their may live in different countries and speak different languages. Often the companies will have offices in all the cities where they have large branches.

7. Many people object to giving money to jobless people because they believe it encourages rather than hard work. They feel it is more to provide job training so unemployed people can get jobs and can earn money to themselves.

8. When I got a job in Quality Control, the factory foreman told us , “If you’re careless, people may die. Don’t ever forget that!” He that we needed to check for problems at every step of the process, not just at the end.

9. It’s possible that the severity of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago was partly due to regulators’ . They didn’t require BP to have an action plan for unexpected breakdowns.)

10. If you believe an issue is important, vote for the candidate who will work to achieve the results you want.

Review Word Formation

Photo of people riding through river rapids in boats with text: 'Act! Don't just drift along, reacting to problems, but work actively on solutions!

Boost your vocabulary by recognizing word families. Learn how suffixes can change the use (& part of speech) of related words.

How Prefixes Change Meaning (& puzzle piece examples): Press, compress, depress, express, impress, repress, & suppress & their meanings (push or press together, down, out, into, back, or under).

Do you wonder what a prefix means? Check out this alphabetical listing of about 50 of the most useful English prefixes, with their meanings & examples.

Picture of 3 fishes swimming together and a different-colored fish swimming in the opposite direction. One fish says of him: 'He always was a nonconformist.'

Knowing a few roots & prefixes can help you figure out meanings of new words. These worksheets show you how, step by step.

For more word formation exercises, see Word Family Practice.

Home> Learn English Vocabulary> Word Formation Examples and Exercises.

Didn't find what you needed? Explain what you want in the search box below. (For example, cognates, past tense practice, or 'get along with.') Click to see the related pages on EnglishHints.
site search by freefind advanced

New! Comments

What do you think about what you just read? Leave me a comment in the box below.
Enjoy this page? Please share it (link to it.) Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.