| affect - effect aisle - isle allowed - aloud ate - eight ball - bawl bear- bare base - bass billed- build blew - blue board - bored break - brake buy - by - bye capital capitol cell sell cent - scent - sent chance - chants chews - choose close - clothes coarse - course creak creek days daze dear deer dew - do- due facts - fax fair - fare fairy - ferry find - fined flour - flower for - four foreword forward gene - jean grease - Greece groan - grown hair - hare hay - hey heal - heel hear - here hi - high hoarse - horse hole - whole hour - our knight - night knot - naught - not know - no | leased - least loan - lone made - maid mail - male marry - merry meat - meet mince - mints missed - mist morning - mourning none - nun one - won pail - pale pear - pair patience - patients piece - peace plain - plane practice - practise rain - reign read - red right - write road - rode rose - rows sail - sale scene seen sea - see sew - so sole - soul son - sun stair - stare steal - steel suite - sweet their - there threw - through to - too - two vary - very waist - waste wait - weight war - wore where wear weak - week weather - whether which - witch wood - would |
V. Prefixes are often used to give adjectives a negative or an opposite meaning, e.g. comfortable/uncomfortable, convenient/inconvenient and similar/dissimilar are opposites. Other examples are 'unjust', 'inedible', 'disloyal'. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of knowing which prefix any adjective will use to form its opposite.
in- becomes im- before a root beginning with 'm' or 'p', e.g. immature, impatient, impartial, improbable. Similarly in- becomes ir- before a word beginning with -r, and il- before a word beginning with '1', e.g. irreplaceable, irreversible, illegal, illegible, illiterate.
The prefix in- (and its variations) does not always have a negative meaning - often it gives the idea of inside or into, e.g. internal, import, insert, income.
The prefixes un- and dis- can also form the opposites of verbs, e.g. tie/untie, appear/disappear. These prefixes are used to reverse the action of the verb. Here are some more examples: disagree, disapprove, disbelieve, disconnect, discredit, dislike, dismount, disprove, disqualify, unbend, undo, undress, unfold, unload, unlock, unveil, unwrap, unzip.
Here are examples of prefixes in English. Some of these words are used with a hyphen.
| prefix | meaning | examples | |
| anti | against | anti-war | antisocial |
| auto | of or by oneself | autobiography | auto-pilot |
| bi | two, twice | bicycle | bilingual |
| ex | former | ex-wife | ex-smoker |
| ex | out of | extract | excommunicate |
| micro | small | microwave microscopic | |
| mis | badly/wronglyy | mistranslate misinform | |
| mono | one/single | monotonous monologue | |
| multi | many | multi-purpose multi-media | |
| over | too much | overdo | oversleep overeat |
| post | after | postwar | post-impressionist |
| pre | before | preconceived pre-war | |
| pro | in favour of | pro-government pro-revolutionary | |
| pseudo | false | pseudo-scientific | pseudo-intellectual |
| re | again or back | retype | replace rewind |
| semi | half | semicircular semi-detached | |
| sub | under | subdivision | submarine |
| under | not enough | underworked undercooked |