ROOT, in philology, Is that part which is common to a group of allied words—the germ out of which they have all sprung. It is arrived at by taking away the formative parts—the suffixes and affixes, and reversing any change that their presence may have caused. Thus, in co-in-cid-ence, the root syllable is cid, the primary form of which in Lat. is cad, to fall, It is seldom that this analysis can be successfully performed with only one language; in order to get at the true root, the corresponding words in all the languages of the same family niust he compared. Thus. in the Eng. words story, history, historical, historically, histor would seem to be the root; but by comparing the Greek with the Lat. and Sanskrit, we arrive at a syllable rid, meaning to see or know, of which the Eng. (to) wit (wist) is only another form. And even then we are not sure that we have arrived at the original and m6st simple form. Thus, Eng. yoke, Lot. jegum, come from the syllable jug, to join, seen in Lat. ju(n)go, Gr. zeugo; and this might he rested in as the root, were them not a simpler form,fti, preserved in Sons., and hav ing the meaning of mingling or being together; this, which may be taken as the pri mary root, gives rise to the two secondary root's or modifications, jug, to join, and yudh, to fight (i.e., to min battle).
The roots of the Aryan languages are always monosyllabic, as i, to go; ga, to go: ad, to eat; 'rah, to speak; star, to strew. They are divisible into two classes, the env expressing some action or general property, as in the instances now given; the other indicating relative position, as ma, here or me; ta, there or that. The one class are called predicative roots; the other pronominal (see PRONOUN, PREPOSITION). They all expressed primarily some physical notion or relation palpable to the senses; but from these the transition to the impalpable conceptions of the mind is natural and obvious; thus, rid, to see, served also for to know. The notion expressed by a root-word is
always of a very general kind; but by a variety of expedients, such as lengthening the vowel, reduplication of the syllable, prefixing and affixing letters and syllables (many of which at least are evidently pronominal roots), and composition with other predicative roots, one germ gives rise to a whole group of words expressive of the specific applica tions of the generic idea. Thus, from the root spat or spec (in Gr. skew), to look, have sprung a numerous family of words in the English and other kindred tongues: spy, despise (to look down upon), spite (through Fr. deapit), respite, respectable, suspicion, pros pect, inspect, auspices, speculum, species (i.e., the appearance or individual form, as opposed to the kind or genus), spices, etc.
Roots, iu the Aryan languages, never enter into speech in their pure and simple form, to make them words, they almost always take on the addition of a pronominal element. Thus, the reduplicate root dada, having the sense of giving, becomes, by the addition of my, the word da-da-mi, I give; yak, to speak, by affixing s (for sa, that), becomes vaks, iu Lat. vox (voks), voice (i.e., that speaking). See INFLECTION.
It requires but a few germs to produce, by the processes above described, the most copious vocabulary. The 50,000 words of the Chinese dictionary are formed from 450 roots; those of Hebrew and of Sanskrit are reckoned at about 500; and there are prob ably not many more iu English (see Max Milllees Lectures, 1st series, p. 252). The theo ries as to the origin of the roots themselves, and why a particular thing or notion should have become associated with a particular sound more than with any other, are noticed under PHILOLOGY and ONOMATOPHIIA.