I really don't quite know how to express the idea in English. In Chinese, there is a very special term of "英语单词的词根拆解", which I cannot find any good translation by googling. It basically mean,
To break an English word into the smallest parts which has special meaning. E.g., corroborate ==> cor-, robust, -ate
Root is indeed the term for the smallest pieces into which you are breaking down the word. There is no familiar word for doing this - an expression like "morphological analysis" would make sense to a linguist but would baffle most others. I think your best bet would be the descriptive phrase "breaking a word down into its roots".
Edited: As one commenter said, we absolutely do learn about prefixes and suffixes. But the skill of recognizing them isn't given a name, and students aren't generally taught to guess etymological connections as obscure as the connection between corroborate and robust. My previous "this skill is not taught" claim was too strong.
Linguists call this morphological segmentation or morphological analysis. ("Morphology" refers to the internal structure of words.)
cor•rob•o•rate. To start changing portions of the word to stand independently—as one might in order to explain exclamation as exclaim + action)—would get into a more specialized type of analysis that would be uncommon outside an academic context.
Commented
Aug 5 at 14:53
When we look at the etymology of a word, we are essentially asking where each part comes from. Specifically, the origin of a word and how its use has changed through history. In English, word origins can be from a lot of countries.
For example, the etymology for destroy is originally from the Classical Latin word dēstruō, from dē- (“un-, de-”) + struō (“I build”). It evolved into a slightly different spelling in Vulgar Latin (vulgar meaning common in this case), then another one in Old French, then to something else in Middle English. From there, it was picked up in modern English.
Etymologies don't necessarily have to involve that much change. The etymology of the verb Shanghai is from the Chinese port Shanghai. Apparently, in the 1800s, shipping owners on the US West Coast would force people into the crews of ships bound for the Far East, typically for Shanghai. Turning nouns into verbs, by the way, is longstanding tradition in English. I think that Shanghai isn't common in modern English (the specific practice is extremely illegal and also a terrible idea even apart from the ethics and legality). As an aside, a lot of English words of Chinese origin may follow the Wade-Giles romanization (an older one, whereas modern speakers prefer Pinyin), or they may not be from Mandarin (e.g. we say wok in English, which is of Cantonese origin minus the tones).
There's no single relevant verb, I think. You would just ask, "what's the etymology of (whatever word)?"
The other answer is very interesting, and I think it is more technically correct. However, be aware that this is a technical term. Linguists would understand it. However, biologists would understand it a slightly different way. And lay people might guess what you mean from the context, but we also might not.
The smallest part of a word with meaning is a morpheme.
Morphemic analysis is the process of identifying the individual units of meaning, called morphemes, within a word. Morphemes can be prefixes, suffixes, or root words, and they each have their own meaning. Language acquisition often begins with a study of root words, or morphemes, that form a base of a word. These root words usually carry the majority of the word’s meaning. Then, prefixes are morphemes that attach to the beginning of words, and suffixes are morphemes that attach to the end of words. Teaching students these individual units of words and how to combine them is the basis of linguistics that will continue to get more complex as students continually grow and develop.
Morphology is important because it allows learners to understand the structure of words and how they are formed. A strong foundation in morphemic analysis can help students with the study of language acquisition and language change. Morphemic analysis can even be useful for educators specifically in fields such as linguistics, vocabulary development, and language processing. As students and teachers understand more about morphemic analysis, they can then improve upon other vital skills for learning.
