McGraw-Hill's Top 50 Skills For A Top Score: ASVAB Reading and Math

Skill 16 Recognize Suffixes and Their Meanings

A suffix is a letter or a group of letters added to the end of a word that alters its meaning in some way. There aren’t as many suffixes as prefixes, but they are important to know.

Here are some examples of suffixes and how they can change word meanings.

• Adding the suffix -ful to the root word joy makes the new word joyful, or “full of joy.”

• Adding the suffix -able to the root read creates the new word readable, meaning “able to be read.”

• Adding the suffix -ly to the adjective quick makes the adverb quickly, meaning “in a quick way.”

Here is a listing of common suffixes. It may be helpful for you to memorize this list.

Here are some suffixes used in sentences in the reading passages in ...