There’s nothing wrong with hyphenating “multi-cultural.” There’s nothing wrong with not hyphenating “multicultural.” There’s nothing wrong with doing it both ways in a single document. But it’s very ...

If something is “disheveled” or “unkempt,” could it also be “heveled” or “kempt”? So asked Ruth Penticoff of New Milford, Ill. And my wife threw in “disgruntled” and “gruntled.” So let’s explore the ...

Regarding Andy Kessler’s “Little to Like on the Prefix Menu” (Inside View, Aug. 28): Can we toss some non-prefix words, too? The ever-irritating “existential” and “performative,” for example—words so ...

They are inconspicuous and usually very short – but they can have a great effect: In the German language, prefixes sometimes succeed in completely changing the meaning of a word. If you read carefully ...

Prefixes are a group of letters that change the meaning of a word when they are added to the start. Most prefixes mean a similar thing when they're added to different words. Prefixes are a group of ...