Editing Prefix (section)

{{short description|Affix which is placed before the stem of a word}}
{{about|the linguistic feature}}
[[File:Präpositionen und Präfixe.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|A comparison of prepositions and directional prefixes in Greek, Latin, English, and German.]]
{{Affixes}}

A '''prefix''' is an [[affix]] which is placed before the [[Word stem|stem]] of a word.{{sfn|Wilson|2011|p=152–153}} Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a '''preformative''', because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed.

Prefixes, like other affixes, can be either [[inflection]]al, creating a new form of a word with the same basic meaning and same [[part of speech|lexical category]], or [[Morphological derivation|derivational]], creating a new word with a new [[semantics|semantic]] meaning and sometimes also a different [[Part of speech|lexical category]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Beard|first=Robert|title=The Handbook of Morphology|year=1998|publisher=Blackwell|pages=44–45|chapter=She Derivation}}</ref> Prefixes, like all affixes, are usually [[Bound and unbound morphemes|bound morpheme]]s.{{sfn|Wilson|2011|p=152–153}}

[[English language|English]] has no inflectional prefixes, using only [[suffix]]es for that purpose. Adding a prefix to the beginning of an English word changes it to a different word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. 

The word ''prefix'' is itself made up of the stem ''fix'' (meaning "attach", in this case), and the prefix ''pre-'' (meaning "before"), both of which are derived from [[Latin]] [[Root (linguistics)|root]]s.