Prefixations

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The process or act of adding elements to the beginnings of words to alter meaning or create new terms; the formation of new words by attaching prefixes; using initial affixes in linguistics to modify root words
2. Incorporating segments at the start of words to change their sense; creating derivative vocabulary by fixed additions before base words; employing starting morphemes to enhance or specify meanings
3. Attaching units before word stems to generate varied meanings; the linguistic method of prefix addition for word construction; applying front-loaded affixes to enrich lexical forms

Etymology: "Prefixations" is simply the plural of "prefixation", the noun for the act of adding a prefix, a word beginning, to another word. The noun was first attested in 1889 and formed by attaching the suffix "-ation" to "prefix", a term that came into English from Latin "praefixus", meaning fixed in front. The plural form is the one that tends to appear when linguists compare many such additions, as in discussions of how a language builds new words through repeated prefixations. Its base, "prefix", carries the original Latin sense of something fixed beforehand, which is exactly what the process describes: a piece attached before the root.