One Step Now Education

March 28, 2025

fossil

I've been challenged several times on scientifically studying words with young students. If a first grader can understand complicated names for dinosaurs, why can't they understand the structure of the words they are encountering in their storybooks? So many of our students are into dinosaurs, I thought fossil might be good for a word study.

Meaning

What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?

A fossil, according to the entry in the Collins CoBuild dictionary, my favorite dictionary for student-friendly definitions, is "the hard remains of a prehistoric animal or plant that are found inside a rock." The word has gained a metaphorical meaning that refers to anything old or outdated.

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In linguistics, a fossil can refer to a word or element that no longer is productive. For instance, the word kith only survives in the phrase "kith and kin." We sometimes use the term fossilize to talk about how words may have been made up of one or more elements in the past, but through time, their orthography and/or pronunciation has fused together so tightly, they can no longer be analyzed. Words like this include purge or surround.

Structure

What are the elements that make up this word's structure?

It's quite possible this word also cannot be analyzed or perhaps we can go with this hypothesis:

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foss + il

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Other words that end with pencil and civil. Could this be a suffix? You can look up suffixes in Etymonline by putting a dash prior to the spelling. (You can do this with prefixes as well by inserting a dash afterwards.) The search takes me to an entry for <-ile> which it says can also be

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There's a history with affixes, just like there's a history with words. The suffix <-ile> comes from either the French <-il> or the Latin <-ilis>. If the fossil, that will be reflected in the entry. Just because it looks like a suffix doesn't mean it always is. Looks can be deceiving.

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The Etymonline entry for fossil arrived in English in the 1610s. This is during the Modern English period. Here is its journey:

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E. fossil​
F. fossile​
L. fossilis​
L. fossus, past participle of fodere

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I occasionally arrange a word's journey in a column like this so my students can note how the word's spelling has changed through time. The verb fodio, "dig out," has four principal parts: fodio, fodere, fodi, and fossus. The principal parts of a Latin verb can be found by going to Lat-Dict and using the search engine there. The second and fourth principal parts are used to find the English base. As Etymonline tells us, fossus, is the fourth principal part, or past participle, of fodio. Remove the suffix <-us> to obtain

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foss + il

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The form fossilis was an adjective form. We see the ancestor of the suffix <-il> in the Latin <-ilis>.

Relatives

What are the word's relatives and history?

If we choose to build a lexical matrix around the base fossilize and fossilization. There is the recent entry to our language, fossiliferous, which contains the base connecting vowel letter connecting the two bases of that compound.

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Etymologically, there is a relationship to calaboose, which took a journey through Spanish and Louisianan French, before coming to mean "prison" in the American West.

Graphemes

What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?

The suffix provides the sticking point for many students when spelling this word. There are several suffixes that are homophonic that could serve here: <-al>, <-le>, and <-el>, along with the earlier <-ile>. The vowel in these suffixes are often reduced to just schwa, and since any vowel letter can spell a schwa, which one to use is always a question. I know of no hard and fast rules, and we do not have any relatives where the vowel is not a schwa to help us out.

Next Steps

What can we learn next about the English orthographic system?

The definition for infatuation in the Collins makes me smile. "strong feelings of love or passion for them which make you unable to think clearly or sensibly about them." We can have an infatuation for a person or a hobby or an item.

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Stay curious,

Brad

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PS. Thanks to those who have already bought me a coffee to show their continued support for my work with these investigations each week. I enjoy helping instructors learn more about English orthography.