Affixes

The endings ‑chronic and ‑chronous both generate adjectives, but when both forms exist they usually have distinct senses. For example, synchronous (Greek sun, with) refers to events existing or happening at the same time, while synchronic refers to the study of a language as it exists at one point in time, the opposite of a diachronic approach, which focuses on the way a language has developed through its history. Another example is isochronous, referring to events that take equal amounts of time. Related nouns are formed using ‑chrony (synchrony; diachrony), or ‑chronism (synchronism; anachronism, from Greek ana‑, backwards, a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists).