New answers tagged suffixes
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The British newspaper The Guardian, for instance, makes a distinction between adaptor vs. adapter in its internal style guide, namely, use adaptor when referring to devices and adapter when referring to people.
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Both Malcolmite and anti-Malcolmite are nouns. One refers to followers and supporters of Sir John Malcolm, a British envoy in Persia in the late 1820s, and the other to opponents of Malcolm. "The Malcolmite MacDonald" is Malcolm's brother-in-law, John MacDonald, who, not surprisingly, is a supporter of Malcolm. Edward Ingram, on the other hand, is said to be ...
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The adjective-forming suffix -al is originally from Latin (in the form -alis). The adjective-forming suffix -ic existed originally in both Latin (in the form -icus) and in Greek (in the form -ικός), but Greek -ικός was used more freely to form new adjectives than Latin -icus. So a large proportion of -ic words are from Greek, while a smaller proportion of -...
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