Is "pervalue" an antonym of "devalue"?
Devalue is commonly used to mean diminish value.
Seems like the prefix re- is sometimes used with opposite effect to de-, as in reinforce meaning to increase force or refried meaning more fried.
However, revalue does not mean to increase value.
In this situation, sometimes per- is used to connote greater intensity. I could not find pervalue in a dictionary - but is it a "valid" word?
1 answer
English speakers do not use "pervalue" in the sense of "to increase value".
Some prefixes are "productive" in a given stage of language evolution, meaning that it is common to use them to create new words according to predictable rules; those new words are easy to understand because of lots of available parallels, and some of such words even catch up.
Can you form any new English words by prefixing "per-" to an existing word? In particular, if you try to create "pervalue", is it likely to be understood?
I don't think that "per-" is a productive prefix in current English. This prefix may occur in some new English words obtained through neo-classical word formation, but it's questionable whether the particular act of prefixing if such cases ever took place in English or always only already in the source language (Latin). The prefix "per-" is thus different from prefixes such as "anti-", "ex-", or "super-". The latter ones are certainly still productive and they can be combined even with roots of Old English, Scandinavian, Norman or French origin when an opportunity arises.
The morpheme "value" comes from Old French, not Latin. This is why "pervalue" is not a Latin word. There is a Latin word "pervaleo" but it's not obvious how it could morph into an English word "pervalue" - neither semantically, nor morphologically.
So no, "pervalue" is not a valid word.

1 comment thread