The building blocks of English

Affixes

sous-

Subordinate; beneath.

French sous, under.

This prefix occurs hyphenated in words borrowed from French: sous-chef, sous-préfecture, sous-lieutenant, sous-entendu (literally ‘under-heard’, something not said but left to be understood). The French word appears in sous vide, used in food science for foodstuffs that are vacuum packed prior to pasteurization.

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