ELA Early Adolescence National Board Certification Practice Exam

An affix is a morpheme added to a word to change its meaning or its grammatical function. Affixes come in several kinds: prefixes attach at the front, suffixes at the end, and some languages use infixes (inserted inside the word) or circumfixes (around the word). They can be derivational, which creates a new word or shifts the part of speech (for example, happy → happiness or teach → teacher), or inflectional, which adds grammatical information (like walk → walked or dog → dogs) without changing the basic meaning or class of the word. This definition fits best because it captures both the idea of being a morpheme that attaches to a word and the different ways it can function.

A root word by itself is the base form, not an added piece. A punctuation mark isn’t a morpheme that attaches to words, and a complete sentence is a full clause, not an affix.