Does the term 'dition' has any meaning by itself or where does it derive from?
It could be found for example in many English words, like edition, addition, expedition or extradition.
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As jlovegren mentions, the suffix is -ition, not -dition. In fact, this is a specific case of the more general suffix -ion. In Latin, the suffix -ion generally makes nouns of action from verbs, and most of the earlier English words with variants of this suffix came from Latin or French originally. Whether the form of the suffix was -ition, -ation, etc. depended on the characteristics of the Latin verb. Nouns with -ition, for example, tend to be those where the Latin verb had a past participal form with -it- - e.g. AUDIRE --> AUDITUM --> AUDITION; ADDERE --> ADDITUM --> ADDITION. So, in answer to your question, -ition (or -ation, -tion, -ion etc.) doesn't have a meaning, as such. Instead it has a grammatical role, as a suffix which usually turns a verbal stem into a noun of action. It developed to perform this function with native English verbs as well as Latin ones. Examples not from Latin include FLIRT --> FLIRTATION, and STARVE --> STARVATION. |
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The short answer is: no. This sequence of letters comes from various roots, and it even cuts right through some of them, like -ped- below. It is not a suffix, but merely a sequence of letters. In ex-ped-it-ion, it comes from Latin pes, stem ped-, meaning "foot". The original sense of the verb ex-ped-i-o was "to get the foot out of [a snare]". Hence it came to connote a certain sense of (increased) movement or speed. It was already used with various similar connotations in Latin: expedio also meant roughly "to expedit". The suffix -io, stem -ion-, is generally added to the stem of a past participle (here ex-ped-it-) to form a noun of action or result: the act of expediting, or the result. In your other words, -dition comes from the Latin verb do, past participle datus/-ditus, stem dat-/-dit-, meaning "give". In compound words, it also means simply "put" or "set". In an e-dition, you give out your book to the public (Dutch uit-geven, "to give out, to publish"): Latin e(x) = "out". In ex-tra-dition, give someone out and over to the other side/party: tra(n)(s) = "over, at the other side". In ad-dition, you give or place a certain something next to something else, as in adding something to a sum: from ad = "to, at". Related question: Word formation with the nominal suffix -tion: when and why do we insert an “a”? |
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In all of the cited words the /d/ is part of the original Latin root: edere: to edit addere: to add expedire: set free tradere: to hand over All of these can be nominalized with a suffix -itio(n) (e.g., editio (nom.), editionis (gen.) editionem (acc.)) |
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