| 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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| § 44. re- |
The primary meaning of the prefix re-, which comes from Latin, is “again.” Re- combines chiefly with verbs, as in these examples: rearrange, rebuild, recall, remake, rerun, rewrite. The prefix has been used with this meaning extensively in English since the 1600s. Sometimes it is necessary to use a hyphen with re- to distinguish between pairs such as recollect (r ´´ -lkt´) and re-collect (r ´´k-lkt´) or recreation (rk´´r ´shn) and re-creation (r´´kr-´shn). A hyphen may also be used when re- precedes a word beginning with e, as in re-enact and re-enter. | 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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