One Step Now Education
December 20, 2024
festive
I studied the word infestation with a student a while back. We began a session recently where they remarked they had a mouse infestation. I had mixed feelings about the remark because I’m not a fan of mice, but I also was proud my student had remembered the word from months prior. After a little more conversation, we decided it was probably a singular mouse and not an infestation. Whew!
So I thought we should look at festive, because ’tis the season!
Meaning
What is this word’s meaning and how does the word function?
To be festive, according to the entry in my source for student-friendly definitions, the Collins CoBuild Dictionary online, is to be “special, colorful, or exciting” because it’s “related to a holiday or celebration.”
Our word is an adjective which can modify nouns. We may have a festive atmosphere or drive around looking at the festive lights. Adjectives may be modified for degree. We can say her decorations are more festive than mine, or we can say Christmas is the most festive time of the year.
Structure
What are the elements that make up this word’s structure?
A common way of forming words in English is affixation. Suffixes may give us clues as to the word’s class. I might hypothesize an <-ive> suffix, which I know will often derive adjectives from verbs.
fest + ive
When I go to the entry in Etymonline, it says that festive is “pertaining to a feast.” When I “follow the froms,” I get:
from Latin festivus
from festum
noun use of festus
And then it tells me to see feast. According to that entry, the word feast is also derived from festus. That entry also explains that the <ea> spelling was used in Middle English.
Relatives
What are the word’s relatives and history?
In a <fest> matrix, I could include festivities, festival, and festal. I could even include festoon, which contains the suffix <-oon> seen on words like spitoon or balloon. I cannot include infest or manifest which come from a different Latin root. Remember that words in a matrix must have a similarly spelled base as well as derive from the same root.
Words that are derived from the same root but have a different base, like feast can be included in an etymological circle that surrounds the matrix. If we wanted to go back to the Proto Indo-European (PIE) root of this word, we could include relatives like atheism, fiesta, fête, and fair.
So for a celebration, we could have a festival or fair in the U.S., a fiesta in Spain, and a fête in France. The circumflex in the French form can indicate an <s> that was elided in its history. fête/feast
Near me, we have an amusement park that holds Winterfest in the Christmas season. We also hold Riverfest every Labor Day weekend with an amazing fireworks show. We also have one of the largest Oktoberfests outside of Germany. In fact, this bound form <-fest> may be borrowed from the German Fest.
Graphemes
What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?
Nothing much to say here. There is an unstressed vowel in the second syllable which has been reduced to schwa. When students are familiar with the suffix <-ive> and the concept that English orthography prioritizes the spelling of elements over pronunciation, then it should alleviate misspellings such as *festave or *festiv.
Next Steps
What can we learn next about the English orthographic system?
Just as with English, there are instances of Latin homographic bases like the <fest> in festive and the <fest> in infest as well. Start with the words pedal and encyclopedia.
What are other words you could gather for a study of the suffix <-ive>?
It might be fun to do some side-by-side comparisons of the same words in English, German, Spanish, and French. The latter two languages are Romance languages, meaning “of Rome,” or Latin (Latium was a region around Rome). English is a Germanic language with a lot of French and Latin influence on the lexicon. You could have a theme, like food words or other Christmas words. Investigations like this are fun to do just before the holidays when minds are more on the upcoming festivities.
Let’s take a moment and expand that second Next Step:
SETTING UP THE STUDY
What are other words we could gather for a study of the suffix <-ive>?
When gathering a list of words with a particular element, I’ll use Neil Ramsden’s Word Searcher. Once you open up Word Searcher, you can type <ive> in the search box and then put a dollar sign ($) after it. The dollar sign is telling the search engine you’d like to see words where this sequence of letters appears at the end.
This search gave me 334 matches. Of course, not all of these words actually contain the suffix <-ive>. Some may just end in <ive>, like the words drive, forgive, or olive. It is now upon me to find words that will be suitable for my student(s). I typically try to find 20-30 words so that I have a large enough sample set that my students aren’t steered down the wrong path.
After I find my data set, I then run each of them through Etymonline to be sure that they actually contain the suffix <-ive>. For example, if I put elusive in the search box on Etymonline, I can see the word is derived from the Latin elus- and the suffix <-ive>. It is safe to keep in my data set. However, when I run survive through Etymonline, I see that it has the base <vive> from the Latin vivere.
Therefore, it is not a suffix <-ive>, and I cannot use it in my data set. Depending on how many words you are left with, you may need to revisit Word Searcher for other words to come to a sample set of 20-30.
CONDUCTING THE STUDY
There are a few ways to go about a suffix study. One way is to have a data set that contains both words with the suffix <-ive> and words that do not have the suffix <-ive>, like survive. The object of this study would be for students to sort the data set into two groups. You could then debrief about how they found proof of the suffix or not. As a plenary, you could then have students construct word sums for both sets.
Another suffix study could be about the function of the suffix itself. What happens when we add a suffix <-ive> to a word. In the case of act and active, the suffix has created an adjective from a verb. With elude and elusive, the answer is similar. Students can continue to analyze words containing <-ive> to construct word sums. Once all the words in the data set have been analyzed, they can then be sorted into groups. Does the suffix <-ive> always create adjectives? What other classes might a suffix <-ive> create?
Students should then be encouraged to find other words containing the <-ive> suffix in their reading materials. They could also be prompted to use words with <-ive> in their writing. Practice using elements being learned within context and not just isolated word lists will help with transfer into actual reading and writing.
I hope taking a peek inside my brain to see how I might plan a suffix study has inspired you to think of suffix studies with your own students.
Stay curious,
Brad
P.S. If you want to show appreciation for my work, I run on coffee. Thank you to all who have previously given.
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