Usage notes

Different Germanic senses of a- became confused – vaguely “intensive” – and are no longer productive. The Greek sense of “not” (e.g.) remains productive.

“[I]t naturally happened that all these a- prefixes were at length confusedly lumped together in idea, and the resultant a- looked upon as vaguely intensive, rhetorical, euphonic, or even archaic, and wholly otiose.”, OED.

Etymology 1

From , originally . Cognate with German .

Prefix

1. , e.g. arise, await

Etymology 3

From variant form of , from .

Prefix

1. , e.g. aware
   • The Twelve Days of Christmas:

     On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me.

     Six geese a-laying

Etymology 4

From , from , from .

Prefix

1. , e.g. abash

Etymology 5

From ( immediately preceding a vowel).

Prefix

1. • 1948 (revised 1952), Robert Graves, The White Goddess, Faber & Faber 1999, p. 7:

     When invited to believe in the Chimaera, the horse-centaurs, or the winged horse Pegasus, all of them straightforward Pelasgian cult-symbols, a philosopher felt bound to reject them as a-zoölogical improbabilities [...].

Usage notes

• The Sakhalin dialect of Ainu still uses the old form an-.
• This is not always prefixed to the verb it governs; other words may intervene between them.

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Etymology

From ( immediately preceding a vowel).

Prefix

1. Prefix prepended to words to denote a negation, deprivation or absence of a property denoted by base word.

   • + →
   • + →
   • + brahija →

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Prefix

Etymology 2

From ( immediately preceding a vowel); generalized from the many Latin borrowings using this prefix.