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Learning English Vocabulary

Suffixes –free and -less

Learning English Vocabulary

BBC

Language Learning, Education

4.5523 Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Carefree or careless? The suffixes -free and -less.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is a download from BBC Learning English. To find out more, visit our website.

0:07.0

Six-minute vocabulary from BBC learning English.com.

0:13.0

Hello and welcome to six-minute vocabulary. I'm Catherine. And I'm Neil.

0:18.0

Today we're looking at the suffixes less and free.

0:23.4

Suffixes are two or three letters at the end of a word that affect its meaning.

0:28.5

We'll look at what the suffixes free and less mean and give you some examples.

0:34.0

There'll be a quiz.

0:35.1

And we'll leave you with a top tip for learning vocabulary.

0:40.7

Let's start by listening to Marcus.

0:44.0

He's a politician and he's talking about his party's policies.

0:48.7

Right. So while you listen, think about this question.

0:52.9

Do e-cigarettes produce smoke? Here's Marcus.

0:58.3

We're focusing on the jobless, the homeless, the sick and the elderly, people who are powerless

1:05.4

to change things for themselves. We're campaigning for more car-free and smoke-free zones. We're going to extend

1:14.0

the smoking ban to include e-cigarettes, which may be smokeless, but they aren't harmless. And we're

1:21.9

going to raise the penalties for careless drivers. So we asked you, do e-cigarettes produce smoke?

1:30.1

And the answer is, no, they don't.

1:32.8

E-cigarettes are smokeless.

1:36.4

And smokeless is a keyword in this program

1:39.7

because it ends with the suffix less, spelt, L-E-S-S.

1:46.0

This means without.

1:48.0

So smoke-less cigarettes are cigarettes without smoke.

...

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