Question 1
The referee's decision was clearly misjudged.
💡 'Misjudged' means judged wrongly or incorrectly.
Year 7 — Vocabulary
Prefixes
Recognise common prefixes, use a prefix to work out an unfamiliar word's meaning, and use prefixes to build new words of your own.
Understand
A prefix is a group of letters added to the START of a word to change its meaning. Learning a small number of common prefixes lets you work out the meaning of hundreds of words you've never seen before, because the same prefix keeps its meaning wherever it appears. For example, 're-' almost always means 'again', 'un-' almost always means 'not', and 'mis-' almost always means 'wrongly' or 'badly'.
“The company had to rebuild the bridge after the flood.”
'Re-' means 'again', so 'rebuild' means to build again. Even without knowing the word 'rebuild' before, you could work out its meaning from the prefix plus the familiar word 'build'.
Spot it
Which prefix has been used in each word, and what does it mean here?
Question 2
She felt completely disconnected from her old friends.
💡 'Disconnected' is the opposite of connected.
Question 3
You should preview the questions before the exam starts.
💡 'Pre-' means before — to preview is to view something before the main event.
Think about it
If you met the word 'reheat' for the very first time, how could knowing the prefix 're-' help you work out what it means without a dictionary?
Try it
Use the prefix to work out the meaning of the underlined word.
The witness's account of the accident was completely inaccurate.
Question 1
What does 'inaccurate' mean, based on the prefix 'in-'?
💡 'In-' is another prefix, like 'un-' and 'dis-', that can mean 'not'.
Practise
Match each prefixed word to its correct meaning.
Question 1
What does 'unfair' mean?
Question 2
What does 'international' mean?
Question 3
What does 'mislead' mean?
Question 4
Add a prefix meaning 'again' to the word 'write' to make a new word meaning 'write again'.
💡 The prefix from the Understand section that means 'again'.
Question 5
What does 'postpone' mean, if 'post-' means 'after'?
Question 6
What does 'disagree' mean?
Apply
Read the passage, then answer the questions below.
The old machine had been misused for years, and by the time engineers arrived it was almost irreparable. They had to disassemble it completely, review each part, then rebuild it from scratch. What had once seemed impossible turned out, with patience, to be entirely possible.
Question 1
"misused" means the machine was used...
💡 Mis- means wrongly.
Question 2
"disassemble" means to...
💡 Dis- often signals the opposite of the base word — 'assemble' means to put together.
Question 3
The passage uses both 'impossible' and 'irreparable'. Type the prefix that both words share, which means 'not'.
💡 Prefixes meaning 'not' change their spelling slightly depending on the letter that follows (im- before 'p', ir- before 'r').
Challenge
The passage says the repair 'turned out, with patience, to be entirely possible' after first seeming 'impossible'. Explain in one or two sentences how the writer's word choice across the passage (misused, irreparable, disassemble, impossible/possible) tracks the machine's journey from broken to fixed.
Review
A quick mastery check — 3 questions.
Question 1
What does 'unlock' mean?
Question 2
What does 'preheat' mean?
Question 3
What does 'disrespect' mean?
Want to practise building words from prefixes, suffixes and roots? Try the word-family builder →