What does "prefix" mean?

Something placed before another; A morpheme added to the beginning of a word to modify its meaning, for example as, pre- in prefix, con- in conjure, re- in reheat, etc.

What is a synonym for "prefix"?

Common synonyms include: accidence, add, adjoin, affix, affixation, agglutinate.

Prefix

//ˈpɹiːfɪks// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun

1
Something placed before another; A morpheme added to the beginning of a word to modify its meaning, for example as, pre- in prefix, con- in conjure, re- in reheat, etc.
"The chosen prefixes won the vote in part because they start with the only two letters left in the alphabet that are not already used in measurement. The b for “bronto” is already used for bytes and h for “hella” is used for hecto, the prefix for 100."
2
an affix that is added in front of the word wordnet
3
Something placed before another; A set of digits placed before a telephone number, to indicate where the number is based, what type of phone number it is (landline, mobile, toll-free, premium rate etc.)
"in the UK, a number with an 0800 prefix is a toll-free number."
4
Something placed before another; A title added to a person's name, such as Mr. or Dr.
5
Something placed before another; An initial segment of a string of characters.
"The string "abra" is both a prefix and a suffix of the string "abracadabra"."

Verb

1
To determine beforehand; to set in advance. transitive
"But the danger was, that a man can hardly prefix any certaine limits unto his desire[…]."
2
attach a prefix to wordnet
3
To put or fix before, or at the beginning of something; to place at the start. transitive

Synonyms

All synonyms

accidence add adjoin affix affixation agglutinate

Antonyms

All antonyms

suffix

Example

More examples

"A curious German word is "entfernen" (to put some distance between), because the prefix "ent-" means to take something away, in this case the distance, but taking away the distance would mean to bring it closer which is the exact opposite of what the word "entfernen" means."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Late Latin praefīxum, from Latin praefīxus, past participle of praefīgō (“I (fix, fasten, set up) in front”, “I fix on the (end, extremity)”) (from prae- (“before”) + fīgō (“I fix”, “I fasten”, “I affix”)), equivalent to pre- + -fix. Doublet of the archaic synonym prefixum.

Etymology 2

From Middle English prefixen, from Middle French prefixer, from Latin praefīxus, past participle of praefīgō (“I (fix, fasten, set up) in front”, “I fix on the (end, extremity)”) (from prae- (“before”) + fīgō (“I fix”, “I fasten”, “I affix”)), equivalent to pre- + -fix.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.