Monday, September 11, 2017

The Suffix -ship

The suffix -ship can be added to a number of nouns to create another class of nouns. It is less productive than the  very productive suffix -tion. In German the corresponding derivational suffix is -schaft, in Dutch -schap, in both Swedish and Norwegian -skap and in Danish -skab. Here is a list of ten common words with the suffix -ship:

censorship
championship
citizenship
dictatorship
fellowship
friendship
membership
ownership
scholarship
sportsmanship

The English suffix -ship attaches to nouns. Other Germanic languages have a similar suffix. In certain cases the noun is always singular as in censorship and in other cases the noun also has a plural form as in scholarship/scholarships.

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