root

A root is the part of a word that carries its subject: the body part or the idea the term is about. The meaning of a root does not move. The part cardi- names the heart and the part hepat- names the liver in every term they open, whether that term ends in an inflammation, a removal or a specialist's name. That steadiness is what makes a root worth learning on its own, because one root answers for every term built on it. The root is the part of a word a reader should look for first: the prefix points at the root from the front, and the suffix says what is being done with it from the end. A root may join its suffix through a combining vowel, a filler that exists to make the term pronounceable and adds no meaning of its own.