BIO comes from the Greek word for "life," and forms the base for many English words. Biology, for instance, is the study of living forms and life processes; the biosphere is the entire area of and above the earth where life can exist; and biotechnologyis the use of living organisms to create useful products.

GEN which comes from the Greek genos, meaning "birth," has generated dozens of English words. A set of genes, for instance, gives birth to a living being. And a genealogy is a historical map of your family, showing how each generation give birth to the next.

FUNCT comes from the Latin verb fungi, "to perform, carry out." If your car is functional, it's able to perform its function of providing transportation. But a functional illiterate is a person who, for all practical or functional purposes, might as well not be able to read or write at all.

MUT comes from the Latin mutare, "to change." Plenty of science-fiction movies--Godzilla, The Fly, The Incredible Shrinking Man--used to be made on the subject of weird mutations, changes in normal people or animals that usually end up causing death and destruction. What causes the unfortunate victim to mutate may be a mysterious or alien force, or perhaps, invisible radiation. Though the science in these films isn't always right on target, the scare factor of an army of mutants can be hard to beat.

FRACT comes from the Latin verb frangere, "to break or shatter." A fraction is one of the pieces into which a whole can be broken, and a fracture is a break in a wall, a rock, or a bone.

TELE has as its basic meanings "distant" or "at a distance." A telescope is for looking at far-off objects; a camera's telephoto lens magnifies a distant scene for a photograph; and a television lets us watch things taking place far away.

PHIL comes from the Greek word meaning "love." In philosophy, it's joined with sophia, "wisdom," so philosophy means literally "love of wisdom." When joined with biblio-, "book," the result is bibliophile, or "lover of books." And Philadelphia, containing the Greek word adelphos, "brother," was named by its Quaker founder, William Penn, as the city of "brotherly love."

NEG and its variants nec- and ne- are prefixs of denial or refusal in Latin, and the Latin verb negare means "to say no." To negate something is to make it ineffective, and something negative denies, contradicts, refuses, or reverses.

Number Words

DEC comes from both Greek and Latin and means "ten." So a decade lasts for ten years; the decimal system is based on ten; and a decahedron is a geometrical shape with ten sides.

CENT from the Latin centum, means "one hundred." A dollar is made up of a hundred cents, though other monetary systems use centavos or centimes as the smallest coin. A centipede has what appears to be a hundred feet, though the actual number varies greatly. But there really are a hundred years in a century.