Privative

A privative, named from Latin privare, 'to deprive', is a particle that negates or inverts the value of the stem of the word. In Indo-European languages many privatives are prefixes; but they can also be suffixes, or more independent elements. A privative, named from Latin privare, 'to deprive', is a particle that negates or inverts the value of the stem of the word. In Indo-European languages many privatives are prefixes; but they can also be suffixes, or more independent elements. In English there are three primary privative prefixes, all cognate from Proto-Indo-European: These all stem from a PIE syllabic nasal privative *n̥-, the zero ablaut grade of the negation *ne, i.e. 'n' used as a vowel, as in some English pronunciations of 'button'. This is the source of the 'n' in 'an-' privative prefixed nouns deriving from the Greek, which had both. For this reason, it appears as an- before vowel, e.g. anorexia, anesthesia. The same prefix appears in Sanskrit, also as a-, an-. In Slavic languages the privative is nie- and u-, e.g. nieboga, ubogi. In North Germanic languages, the -n- has disappeared and Old Norse has ú- (e.g. ú-dáins-akr), which became u in Danish and Norwegian, o in Swedish, and ó in Icelandic. Many words introduced into the English from the Latin start with the prefix in-. While often, it is a privative, it is not always so. Even if it is a privative, the meaning may be unclear to those who are not familiar with the word. The following three examples illustrate that. Example 1: inexcusable The prefix is a privative and the word means the opposite of excusable that is, 'unable to be excused, not excusable'. Example 2: invaluable That is also a privative but it does not mean 'not valuable, not precious'. While today valuable is a synonym for precious, it originally meant 'able to be given a value'. The meaning of invaluable hinges upon this original meaning and thus means 'of very great value' or literally 'value cannot be estimated (because it is so great)', similar to priceless but dissimilar to worthless.