Download Latin 1 Curriculum Revision Sample Exercise

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Coining and Understanding New Words
One of the benefits of knowing Greek and Latin is the ability it gives you to create
new words should the need arise. It also gives you the ability to understand words that
others have coined that are not common enough to appear in the dictionary. Interpreting
new words formed from Greek and Latin roots is pretty straight forward. You should
translate each of the roots that make up a word—from left to right—and end up with the
cumulative (= total) meaning. The following examples—using roots from the list on a
following page—illustrate how you do this. Note that when combining roots, the vowel
at the end of the first root is dropped before a vowel at the beginning of the next root.
Example: hippotauromachy ‘battle between horses and bulls’ (literally = ‘horse bull
battle’) from hippo- ‘horse’, tauro- ‘bull’ and –machy ‘battle’. Note that you are allowed
to make some changes from the literal wording. This is often necessary to make a clearer
translation in English.
Here are some additional examples:

megalodontohippophilia ‘love for horses with big teeth’ (lit. = ‘big toothed
horse love’)

necrogigantopolis ‘city of dead giants’ (lit. = ‘dead giant city’)

micromelanohippophilia ‘love for small, black horses’ (lit. = ‘small, black horse
love’)
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Now practice translating new words on your own. First translate from Greek into
English and create the Greek form from the meaning of the given English words.
A.
Greek into English
1. xenocracy
2. theophobia
3. hagiopolis
4. plutocracy
5. gigantomachy
6. xanthotrichogynecophilia
7. necroleukandrophobia
8. aischroxanthodontophobia
9. megalaischroleukozoopolis
B.
English to Greek
1. Indiana City
2. rule of saints
3. fear of horses
4. love of small horses
5. battle of bulls, horses and frogs
6. study of white hair
7. fear of ugly red giants
8. love of dead ugly red giants
9. rule of ugly yellow-haired animals
10. study of large black animals
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Root List

xeno- ‘foreigner’
melano- ‘black’

theo- ‘God / god’
micro ‘small’

hippo- ‘horse’
pluto- ‘rich’

-phobia ‘fear of’
batracho- ‘frog’

leuko- ‘white’
zoo- ‘animal’

hagio- ‘saint’
erythro- ‘red’

-ology ‘study of’
hippo- ‘horse’

xantho- ‘yellow’

gyneco- ‘woman’

tauro- ‘bull’

necro- ‘dead’

andro- ‘man’

tricho- ‘hair’

aischro- ‘ugly’

-polis ‘city of’

odonto- ‘tooth’

-machy ‘battle’

-philia ‘love of’

megalo- ‘big’

-cracy ‘rule of’

giganto- ‘giant’
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