| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 243
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| fle, trifler. However, there are many exceptions to this rule: Many words of this type have alternative forms (the preferred form is given first): blame, blamable or blameable; blue, bluish or blueish. And in certain cases, alternative forms have different meanings: linage or lineage (number of lines) but lineage (ancestry). | 1 |
| Many words ending in ce or ge keep the e before the suffixes -able and -ous: advantage, advantageous; change, changeable; trace, traceable. | 2 |
| Words ending in a silent e keep the e if the word could be mistaken for another word: dye, dyeing; singe, singeing. | 3 |
| If the word ends in ie, the e is dropped and the i changed to y before the suffix -ing. A word ending in i remains unchanged before -ing: die, dying; ski, skiing. | 4 |
| Mile and acre do not drop the e before the suffix -age: mileage, acreage. | 5 |
| Adding a suffix beginning with a consonant to a word ending in a silent e: | 6 |
| Words ending with a silent e generally retain the e before a suffix that begins with a consonant: plate, plateful; shoe, shoeless; arrange, arrangement; white, whiteness; awe, awesome; nice, nicety. However, there are many exceptions to this rule. Some of the most common are abridge, abridgment; acknowledge, acknowledgment; argue, argument; awe, awful; due, duly; judge, judgment; nine, ninth; true, truly; whole, wholly; wise, wisdom. | 7 |
| Adding a suffix to a word ending in y:
Words ending in y preceded by a consonant generally change the y to i before the addition of a suffix, except when the suffix begins with an i: accompany, accompaniment; beauty, beautiful; icy, icier, iciest, icily, iciness; but reply, replying. | 8 |
| The y is retained in derivatives of baby, city, and lady and before the suffixes -ship and -like: babyhood, cityscape, ladyship, ladylike. | 9 |
| Adjectives of one syllable ending in y preceded by a consonant usually retain the y when a suffix beginning with a consonant is added: shy, shyly, shyness; sly, slyly, slyness; wry, wryly, wryness; but dryly or drily, dryness. These adjectives usually also retain the y when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added, although most have variants where the y has changed to i: dry, drier or dryer, driest or dryest; shy, shier or shyer, shiest or shyest. | 10 |
| Words ending in y preceded by a vowel usually retain the y before a suffix: buy, buyer; key, keyless; coy, coyer, coyest; gay, gayer, gayest; but day, daily; gay, gaily or gayly. | 11 |
| Some words drop the final y before the addition of the suffix -eous: beauty, beauteous. | 12 |
| Adding a suffix to a word ending in c: | 13 |
| Words ending in c almost always have the letter k inserted after the c when a suffix beginning with e, i, or y is added: panic, panicky; picnic, picnicker. This is done so that the letter c will not be pronounced like s. | 14 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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