The building blocks of English

Affixes

-fuge

Also ‑fugal.

An agent that dispels, drives away or eliminates something.

Latin ‑fugus, from fugare, to drive away or to put to flight.

Some terms here are medical: febrifuge, a drug or treatment that reduces or prevents fever; vermifuge, one that removes parasitic worms. A calcifuge (Latin calx, calc‑, lime) is a plant that is not suited to soil containing lime, and so is figuratively driven away by it. Derived adjectives are formed in ‑fugal (febrifugal, vermifugal).

A centrifuge is a rotating device that separates substances; this derives from the related Latin verb fugere, to flee. Two other similarly formed common words are refuge and subterfuge.