Question

Identify the best suffix to add to the given root word:
Fashion
A. able
B. ish
C. ible
D. ive

Answer 1

Hint: A root word is the word to which you add a suffix. A suffix is an addition to a meaningful word to form another word which has a proper meaning as well. An example is the word “decoration”. The root word is “decorate”. The suffix added is “-ion”. Both the words decorate and decoration are meaningful words.

Complete answer:
In the given question, the root word is Fashion. It means something which is the popular style of clothes, hair or doing something. Many girls follow fashion magazines.
There are four suffixes given. Let us use each of them to the given root word and see if they make sense.

> If we use option a, the word becomes “fashionable”. Fashionable is an adjective. Emma wears fashionable clothes. This means that Emma wears really stylish and popular clothes. The word fashionable makes sense. It exists in the English language.

> Option b is “-ish”. The word fashion becomes fashionish. This word does not exist in the English language. It does not make any sense. So option b is wrong.

> Option c says ‘-ible’. Fashionible is not a word. It does not have any meaning. This is a wrong option.

> Using option d, we get the word “fashionive”. This is also a meaningless word.

Therefore, we can conclude that option a is the right suffix for the word “fashion”. The correct word is “fashionable”.

Note: There are two things students must keep in mind while using suffixes.
First, both the root word and the word after adding the suffix must make sense. Both the words fashion and fashionable make sense.
Second, a common mistake may be that people may get confused between option a and c. The word “fashionable” is pronounced by many people as “fashionible”. The correct word is fashionable and not fashionible.