Revisiting the word “Philosophy”

Knowing how English words are formed through examples of prefixes

通過例子去認識前綴（prefixes）在英文造詞之作用

T: Thomas, S: Sophia

T: Hi Sophia, what is your subject for today’s discussion?

S: Last time through how my name is formed you helped me know more deeply about word roots. Thanks so much. Can I ask a bit more about how prefixes and suffixes function?

T: What are prefixes and suffixes? Parts of words that you find either at the beginning or at the end of the word. But these can’t stand alone, and most roots aren’t able to stand alone either.

S: Can you give me some more examples? Now I only know how the word philosophy is formed, by putting two Greek roots together, like this, philo plus sophia, right?

T: Correct. Let’s have a couple of prefixes related to the roots making up the word philosophy. We may start with the root philo or phil first. Now, we can put phil and anthropo together and we’ll have philanthrophy, which means love of mankind。

S: Ah, I see. What else?

T: Well, we can have philharmonic, like Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, which means love of harmony in music.

S: So philharmonic means that!

T: Yes, and there are more. Like the name Philip, which means love of horses, since phil means love and hippos means horses.

T: Hi Sophia, 今天你有甚麼課題，想一起討論﹖

S: 上次你通過我的英文名（Sophia），加深了我對詞根（roots）的認識，十分感謝你。今天，我可以了解多一點前綴及後綴的運用嗎﹖

T: 甚麼是前綴和後綴？英文單詞的開頭部分，就是前綴；單詞部分的結尾，就是後綴。不論前綴或後綴， 都是不能單獨存在，而且大多數詞根也不能單獨存在。

S: 你能給我一些例子嗎？ 現在我只知道英文字哲學（Philosophy）是怎麼形成的，就是把兩個希臘詞根放在一起，像這樣，philo加sophia，對吧？

T: 對。讓我們談談一些與構成哲學這個詞的詞根相關的前綴。我們可以先看看詞根philo或phil。現在， 我們可以把phil和anthropo放在一起，我們就有了philanthrophy（慈善），意思是對人類的愛。

S: 啊，我明白了。還有甚麼？

T: 好吧，我們可以構成「管弦樂團」（philharmonic）， 像香港管弦樂團（ Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra），意味著熱愛音樂和諧。

S: 這就是 philharmonic 的意思!

T: 是的，還有更多。就像Philip這個名字，意思是對馬兒的鍾愛，因為phi的意思是愛，而hippos的意思是馬。