The Roots Series · Latin
Learn the Latin roots of English
Stop learning English one word at a time.
Listen · Read · Repeat · Rate · Fight
Nobody with a large vocabulary built it word by word. They learned to read the parts. Meet irreparable and you can take it to pieces on sight — ir·re·par·able, "not able to be made ready again" — and read its meaning straight off the surface.
The sum of its parts
Learn the parts, and the words assemble themselves.
Learn a single root — par: to make ready, to make equal — and a dozen words open at once. Prepare, repair, separate, compare, parity, peer, disparage, parade — and even emperor and rampart derive from this root. The next par- word you meet surrenders its meaning without a dictionary.
This is the vocabulary of serious English: the language of argument, law, history, and the sciences. The gap between nominal and token, renown and fame, and between thinking and cogitating. Precise words make precise thoughts — and roots are the parts precise words are built from.
A few dozen prefixes, roots, and suffixes — the building blocks that attach to almost everything.
Read an unfamiliar word apart into its parts, and its meaning is already there waiting for you.
A word is an assembly
Every word here is colour-coded by part. Tap one to take it to pieces.
The toolkit you start with
The pack opens with the prefixes — the directions and positions that snap onto any root.
One root, a whole family
Each cluster is a single Latin root and the English words descended from it. Learn it once.
Thirteen words, one root. Once you can see the par in each, you never memorise them separately again — and the next one you meet falls open the same way.
From plain to formidable
The pack runs five tiers, T1 to T5 — and the words grow up as you do.
- transportto carry from one place to another
- conspicuousclearly visible; attracting notice, often unwelcomely
- perfidiousdeliberately deceitful and untrustworthy; treacherous
- miscreanta person whose behaviour is criminal or morally wrong
- stringentstrict, precise, and exacting
Flashcards as an integrated system
- Paired cards
- 500 cards, 1,000 words, in 30 root clusters across five tiers — each card pairs a headword with a relative from the same family, so the word and its kin arrive together.
- Fibonacci SRS
- Rate each card 0–5. The better you know a word, the longer before it returns — spaced repetition on Fibonacci intervals.
- Boss fights
- Each root family is gated by a duel you can't win without confronting and overcoming its hardest members.
- Graduation
- Beat a family and its cards leave your daily deck for good. The deck gets smaller as you learn.
- Etymology
- Every card shows the root, its Latin source, and exactly how the parts assemble — plus synonyms and antonyms to place each word precisely.
- Audio
- Clean Piper text-to-speech on every word and example sentence.
- Lessons
- Reference lessons fire at the point in the sequence where they unlock what you're about to read.
English taught in English
- The cards
- English throughout — headword, definition, example sentence and usage note. You meet English in English, the way you will meet it everywhere else.
- The interface
- FlashBoss itself speaks English, German, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish. Navigate the game in your own language while the English on the card stays English.
- British or American
- The British English Layer covers every English pack. Take this one in British voice and British spelling if you prefer — the cards carry both.
Part of the Roots Series
The shape of English and its neighbours, made visible. Four packs, no order — start with the layer closest to a language you already speak.
Latin Roots and Greek Roots are the pair beyond the course. They come after English Adept, for readers who want the scholarly layer and the vocabulary of the sciences. A hobby for the linguistically curious, and none the worse for it.
The Germanic backbone of everyday English — the words you already half-know.
The second English — 1066 and the French that came with it.
English built from its parts — the classical and scientific layer, assembled.
You are hereThe vocabulary of science, medicine, and abstraction — the layer above Latin.
The whole path — English Advance, German Roots, Norman Roots, English Adept, Latin Roots, Greek Roots — is laid out on the English immersion system.
Read the next word apart.
500 cards · 1,000 words · the full prefix & suffix toolkit · etymology on every card. The complete word list, every reference lesson, and a playable boss-fight demo are on the website.
Get Latin Roots on Steam →