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Hello and welcome to the 6 Minute Vocabulary.
I'm Catherine. And I'm Neil.
Today, we're looking at the suffixes less and free.
Suffixes are two or three letters at the end of a word that affect its meaning.
We'll look at what the suffixes free and less mean and give you some examples.
There'll be a quiz...
And we'll leave you with a top tip for learning vocabulary.
Let's start by listening to Marcus.
He's a politician and he's talking about his party's policies.
Right. So while you listen, think about this question.
Do e -cigarettes produce smoke?
Here's Marcus. We're focusing on the jobless, the homeless, the sick and the elderly – people who are powerless to change things for themselves.
We're campaigning for more car -free and smoke -free zones.
We're going to extend the smoking ban to include e -cigarettes, which may be smokeless but they aren't harmless.
And we're going to raise the penalties for careless drivers.
So we asked you, do e -cigarettes produce smoke?
And the answer is no, they don't.
E -cigarettes are smokeless.
And smokeless is a key word in this programme because it ends with the suffix less, spelled L -E -S -S.
This means without.
So smokeless cigarettes are cigarettes without smoke.
They don't produce any smoke.
And if something is harmless, it doesn't cause harm.
Marcus said that e -cigarettes are not harmless.
In other words, they are dangerous.
Marcus also said his party was going to raise penalties or increase punishments for careless drivers – people who drive without care.
Yes, careless means not being careful.
So by adding less to the nouns smoke, harm and care, we turned them into adjectives.
Let's hear some more examples with less.
We're focusing on the jobless, the homeless, the sick and the elderly – people who are powerless to change things for themselves.
So we had the jobless.
That's people without jobs.
The homeless. People who have nowhere to live.
We can create a noun to describe a particular group of people by using the word the with a less word.
The jobless, the homeless.
Lastly, we had the adjective powerless, which describes people who are unable to do certain things.
If we add the, we get a group noun – the powerless.
Let's have another clip.
Listen out for the suffix free.
We're campaigning for more car free and smoke free zones.
We had car free and smoke free.
Now, if you add free to a noun, you get an adjective, meaning that there isn't any of that noun, or it's not allowed, or both.
Car free means there are no cars because they're not allowed.
Smoke free means smoking is not allowed and so there is no smoke.
And we're talking about the suffixes free and less.
Neil, how was your journey to work today?
Stress free, I hope?
No, actually, it was awful.
I tried to use my contactless credit card to pay for the train but it didn't work, so I had to walk all the way.
Oh, well, won't do you any harm, Neil?
No, it's good for me, I suppose.
It is. And contactless credit cards are the cards that work without a PIN number.
Usually, you use either free or less with a particular word, but occasionally you can use free and less interchangeably, as in sugarless and sugar free.
These both mean without sugar.
But be very careful with the words careless and carefree because they have very different meanings.
Yes, they do. A careless person is someone who doesn't take much care over what they're doing.
Whereas a carefree person like you, Neil, doesn't worry about anything.
No, I don't worry about a thing.
Now it's time for a quiz.
Choose the correct word, ready?
Number one. Jack looks scary, but he's actually very kind and gentle.
He's A, careless, B, harmless, C, powerless.
And the answer is B, harmless.
Number two. Dahlia doesn't check her work properly, so she makes lots of mistakes.
She's very A, careless, B, carefree, C, contactless.
And the answer is A, careless.
Number three. To cut the risk of cancer, some people smoke E cigarettes, which are A, smokeless, B, smokeless free, C, smokefree.
And the answer is A, smokeless.
And that's the end of the quiz.
Well done if you got them right.
And now, here's today's top tip for learning vocabulary.
Record yourself saying new words and then listen to them every day.
Top tip. And there's more about this at bbclearningenglish .com.
Join us again for more six -minute vocabulary.
Bye. Bye. Six -minute vocabulary.
From the BBC.
