| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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8. Word Formation: Plurals, Possessives, Affixes, and Compounds
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| § 28. -less |
| The suffix -less comes from the Old English suffix -leas, from the word leas, meaning “without.” In Old English and Middle English, -less was often used to convey the negative or opposite of words ending in -ful, as in careful/careless and fearful/fearless. But -less was also used to coin words that had no counterpart ending in -ful: headless, loveless, motherless. Although -less normally forms adjectives by attaching to nouns, sometimes it attaches to verbs, as in tireless. | 1 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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