Monday, November 4, 2013

How Do We Know What Compound Words Mean?

Introduction:
Sometimes, we can tell what a compound word means based on the meaning of the smaller words that make them up.

Let's take a look:
Afternoon is a compound word. It is made up of after and noon. We know that 'after' means to proceed or follow something. We also know  what 'noon' means when we learned about time. We learned that 'noon' was what we call 12pm.

Let's take a closer look:
If we put the meanings of the two smaller words together, we will see that afternoon means coming after midday.

Let's think of other words:
Wheelchair: wheel and chair. Wheel means something that rolls. A chair is furniture used to sit on. When we look at that definition we see that a wheelchair is rolling furniture that we sit on.

Conclusion:
Not all compound words can be defined by the meaning of the smaller words that make it. For example: Butterfly is made up of the two words "butter" and "fly". Butter is soft, creamy, and spread for food. A fly is an insect. When we put those meanings together, a butterfly is not an insect that we spread on food. When this happens, we have to find out what the word means in a different way.

There are links on the right of the screen that you can look at now. They are in the worksheets and interactive quizzes that are a part of the blog.
Do at least one worksheet, and one quiz and comment your answers to both below.

No comments:

Post a Comment