Affixes

Words often have a diminutive or derogatory sense: wastrel, a wasteful or good-for-nothing person (originally meaning a strip of uncultivated land, so deriving from waste); doggerel, comic verse composed in irregular rhythm (apparently from a contemptuous sense of dog, as in dog Latin); cockerel, a young domestic cock; scoundrel may be similarly derived, but nobody knows for sure. Other words come from a variety of unrelated sources: mackerel, minstrel, mongrel, squirrel.