40 Numerical Affixes

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English makes use of both Greek and Latin prefixes to express numbers or quantities.  Below is a list of the most common of these.

Prefix

Meaning

Example

uni- one unicycle
mono- one monoplane
bi- two bilingual
di- two dioxide
tri- three tripod: having 3 legs
quad- four quadruped: four-footed animal
quint- five quintuplets: five babies born at one birth
penta- five pentagon: figure with five sides
hex- six hexapod: having six legs
sex- six sextet: group of six musicians
sept- seven septennial
hept- seven heptagonal
oct- eight octogenarian
non nine nonagenarian
dec- ten decade
cent- hundred century
hecto- hundred hectogram:100 grams
milli- thousand millennium
kilo- thousand kilogram: 1,000 grams
mega- million or large megaton: one million tons
giga- billion gigawatt: one billion watts
multi- many multinational
poly- many polygon
ambi- both or double ambidextrous
omni- all omnipotent
semi-

hemi

half

half

semisweet

hemisphere

 

 

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Academic Reading and Vocabulary Skills Copyright © by UW-Madison ESL Program; Alejandro Azocar; Heidi Evans; Andrea Poulos; and Becky Tarver Chase is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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