Exercise 7

Exercise 8

Note the use of the helping verbs in the following quotation. Could you use might or must or ought anywhere and strengthen the emphasis?

"I have looked at this claim by the light of history and my own confidence, and it seems to me, so looked at, to be a most just claim, and that resistance to it means nothing short of a denial of the whole of civilization.

This then is the claim:

It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.

Turn that claim about as I may, think of it as long as I can, I cannot find that it is an exorbitant claim; yet if society would or could admit it, the face of the earth would be changed; discontent and strife and dishonesty would be ended. To feel that we were doing work useful to others and pleasant to ourselves, and that such work and its due reward could not fail us! What serious harm could happen to us then? And the price to be paid for so making the world happy, must be revolution."—William Morris.

SPELLING

LESSON 10

Simple words are sometimes spoken of as root words. Root means that from which something grows. We know our language is a living, growing thing and these root words are the roots where the growth begins. One way in which this growth is accomplished and new words added to our language is by placing syllables before or after the root word—the simple word—as, for example: unmanly.

In this we have a syllable placed before and a syllable placed after the root word man. The syllable placed before the root word is called the prefix from the Latin pre meaning before and the Latin word to place. Therefore, prefix means literally to place before.

A prefix consists of one or more syllables placed before a word to qualify its meaning.