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

A skilled worker with a specified material.

[English smith.]

Several examples mark a person who works with a metal: goldsmith, silversmith, coppersmith, tinsmith. A blacksmith works in iron, the black metal, as opposed to a whitesmith, who works in tin, the white metal. The ending can also indicate someone skilled with types of articles: gunsmith, locksmith. Other examples, originally jocular but increasingly accepted as standard terms, indicate a skill in music or writing: wordsmith, songsmith, tunesmith, jokesmith.

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