What are affixes?

Affixes are parts you add to words to change their meaning or make new words.

Imagine you have a toy box full of blocks, each block is like part of a word. When you put one block on top of another, you make something new!

If the word "play" is your base block, adding an affix is like stacking another block on it.

• If you add "er" to the end, you get "player", like someone who plays.
• If you add "ing", you get "playing", like what you do while playing.

These added parts are called affixes, they can go on the beginning (prefixes), middle (infixes), or end (suffixes) of a word. Think of it like adding stickers to your blocks, each sticker changes how the block looks or what it does.

Take a pencil and write "run" on a piece of paper. Now, add "s" at the end, you get "runs", which is what people do when they run together! That little "s" is an affix too!

Affixes are like tools in your word-building kit, simple, but super powerful!