This mini episode teaches you about the -en suffix.
Episode 177 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a mini episode that teaches you about the -en suffix. Send your questions about English and your suggestions for future episodes to EverybodyESL@gmail.com! (And let me know if you’d like to record the introduction to a future episode.)
The topic for this episode is one English suffix. Do you remember what a suffix is? A suffix is a little piece of a word that comes at the end of the word. And the suffix that I want to talk about today is -en, spelled e-n.
You can see this suffix in words like neaten (n-e-a-t-e-n) or cheapen (c-h-e-a-p-e-n) or soften (s-o-f-t-e-n). In each of those words, you see an adjective and an ending that is the suffix -en. Let's look a little bit more closely at a word that has this suffix. The word we can look at is sharpen. Sharpen. S-h-a-r-p-e-n. Sharpen. In that word, we have the word sharp, and then we have the suffix -en. What does sharpen mean? Sharpen means “to make something sharp.” And in this example, we can see what the suffix -en usually means. The suffix is usually added to adjectives and turns the adjectives into verbs that mean “to make something ...” whatever the adjective is.
Now, we can see this with the word sharpen. We start with the adjective sharp, and we add the -en suffix, and we end up with the verb sharpen, “to make something sharp.”
I made a short list of other verbs that work like this. They are verbs that come from adjectives plus the -en suffix. In addition to neaten, cheapen, soften, and sharpen, I also thought of deepen (“to make something deep”), deaden (“to make something dead” or “to make something somehow less alive or less active”), deafen (that’s d-e-a-f-e-n and means “to make someone deaf”), worsen (“to make something worse”), widen (“to make something wide” or “to make it wider”), and lighten (“to make something light” or “to make something lighter”).
One thing I discovered when I was making this list for this episode is that the -en suffix is only used with one-syllable adjectives. We don't use it with longer adjectives. Or at least I think that's true. I had never noticed this before. I had never thought about it before, but now I think that's true: I think we only use this suffix with short (one-syllable) adjectives.
I should make something else clear: you can’t add the -en suffix to every one-syllable adjective. You can say to redden—oh! I just remembered another of these words—but you can’t say smallen (which I guess would mean “to make something small”). Redden is a word, but smallen isn’t. The -en suffix only works with some one-syllable adjectives.
I did think of one example of a word that uses the suffix that is not like the others. And that word is lengthen (“to make something long” or “to make something longer”). You'll notice that in lengthen, we don't see an adjective and that -en suffix. Instead, we see a noun plus that -en suffix. Length is a noun, not an adjective. It’s related to the adjective long, but it is a noun. Lengthen is built from a noun plus that -en suffix. That is the only example of a noun that uses that -en suffix. Or I should say it's the only example I can think of for now. Maybe I will think of another example later. Maybe you will find an example later of a noun that works with that suffix. But for now, think of it this way: the -en suffix is used to turn some one-syllable adjectives into verbs.
And I think this is an important suffix for you to know about because you will encounter many verbs that are built by using this suffix. And even if you have never seen the verb—for instance, maybe you have never seen the verb deafen—if you know what this suffix means and how it is used, then you might be able to figure out what a new verb means.
Well, that is the -en suffix, and I think that is an important piece of English for you to know.