even those that might as well be the same without the ‘a’, such as
a-lert. Wouldn’t ‘lert’ be the equivalent?
But, for purity sake, just those a words that really do mean the same without the ‘a’, such as:
abide
anear
attuned
akin
It seems that when the ‘a’ means ‘toward’, it makes sense, but some others don’t.
The tornado was afar off, vs. the tornado was far off.
I’m not a-goin’ to contribute to this thread. Much.
I once had fun explaining to my nephews that flammable meant the same thing as inflammable, and watched the wheels turn in their heads before they ran off to pester my brother with their new “discovery”.
Stupid thing we’d yell in high school:
Be alert- because we need more Lerts!!
Did “aloud” at some point corrupt into “out loud”?
Well, they don’t mean the same, quite, depending on how they’re used.
I think your base premise is flawed. I think the “a” prefix has several different meanings.
Compare “affixed” with “fixed”. A stamp can be affixed to an envelope, but the stamp cannot really be fixed to the envelope.
I disagree, respectfully. I would say that fixing a stamp to an envelope is the same thing as affixing it.
When the ‘a’ means ‘toward’, I get it, but there seems to me to be a lot of such words that just sounded better to 200 year ago ears than without the ‘a’. The ‘lert’ one, of course, without the ‘a’ results in a word with which we are not familiar, but, I would argue, does mean the same thing, we just haven’t bused our ears enough with it to make it sound okay.
What is the opposite of ‘alive’? ‘Adead’?
“Abide” and “Bide” are not at all synonymous. “Abide” means to accept a circumstance; “I guess I’ll abide by the rules.” Less commonly, it means to dwell somewhere. “Bide” means to wait or stay in place; “I’ll bide my time until Sarah gets here.” Archaically, “abide” could be used in place of “bide” but it’s not anymore.
“Anear” is pretty much a dead word. I have never in my life heard a person say that word.
“Attuned” specifically means to be adjusted to a specific situation or stimuli. “Tuned” means a lot more things, so “attuned” does have a unique flavor that makes it worthwhile as a word.
“Akin” and “kin” are, obviously, different.
Merriam-Webster agrees with you; “affix” is given as a synonym for “fix” in the first definition.
Although, to be utterly pedantic, you have to drop the “af” at the beginning.
Aardvark.
ashamed?
o’possum (in case this expands to other leading letters)
Well, unless you’re Welsh…
I understand the “a” prefix to carry some sense of approximation, or metaphorical extension of the root word’s meaning. So “kin” refers to a close blood relationship, but “akin” means “very like”, and “tuned” indicates a precise calibration of sound to a specific scale where “attuned” simply refers to a sympathetic adjustment or resonance.
Lert? :dubious::dubious::dubious:
Be careful with words that start with Al. A lot of them are Arabic and they reference Allah.
From a whole nother thread: