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Affixes: the building blocks of English
Affixes: the building blocks of English
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idio-

Personal; own.

[Greek idios, own, distinct.]

Something idiosyncratic (Greek sun, with, plus krasis, mixture) is peculiar to an individual; an idiom (Greek idiōma, private property, peculiar phraseology) is a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words; an idiolect is the speech habits peculiar to a particular person; in medicine idiopathic denotes any disease or condition which arises spontaneously or for which the cause is unknown. Idiot derives from the same root, via Greek idiōtēs, a private person, layman, or ignorant person. This form is easily confused with ideo-.

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