NECRO comes from the Greek nekros, meaning "dead body," so it's not surprising that it shows up in some unappetizing places. A necrophagous insect, for instance, is one that feeds on dead bodies; when homicide investigators discover a corpse, they may use the insect evidence to figure out when the person died.

PALEO comes from the Greek palaios, meaning "ancient"--that is, "older than old." The prefix sometimes gets attached to very recognizable words; paleobiology, for instance, deals with the biology of fossil organisms, palegeography is the study of geography in earlier geological eras, and paleoecology is the study of the releationship of plants and animals to their environment in those eras.

CIRCU/CIRCUM comes from the Latin circus, meaning "circle." So a circus is traditionally held under a round tent. A circuit can be a tour around an area or territory, or the complete path of an electric current. To circumnavigate means "to navigate around"--often around the world.

MINI/MINU comes from Latin words meaning "small" and "least." So the minimum is the least, and a minute amount is almost nothing. And mini- is all too familiar as a prefix that we've been applying to all kinds of things since the 1950s: minivan, miniskirt, mini-mart, minipark, and the rest.

INTER comes straight from Latin. In English it has various meanings; all of them can be expressed broadly as "between," but they're still quite distinct: "moving between" (intercity), "communicating between" (intercom), "coming between" (intercept), and so on. No wonder so many English words begin with inter-.

SUR is actually a shortening of the Latin prefix super-, meaning "over, above" (see SUPER), and has the same meaning. A surface is the face above or on the outside of something. A surplus is something above and beyond what is needed. And to survey a landscape is to look out over it.

CO is a Latin prefix that generally means "with, together," and we see it daily in such words as costar, cofounder, co-owner, and coworker. But many other co- words aren't quite so easy to understand when you first encounter them.

SYN is a Greek and Latin prefix meaning "together" or "at the same time." So "in sync" (short for "in synchronization") means "together in time." And a synonym is a word that can be considered together with another word since it has the same meaning.

Words from Mythology and History