Deconstructing a Word

Disappeared is a single word from the example sentence the green sports car which is deconstructed for you here.

Even this single word can be deconstructed if necessary.

The first part to look for is the root of the word. In this case the root is appear. Now it becomes clear that the root has a small addition at the beginning and another at the end. These are called affixes. The affix at the beginning is called a prefix and that at the end is called a suffix. The prefix, root and suffix are all called morphemes. A morpheme is "the smallest contrastive unit of grammar" eg man, de-, -tion, -s.

Other things we can say about this word:
* the prefix "dis-" is a negative prefix, which when added to the root word expresses its opposite;
* the suffix "-ed" makes a past participle, expressing the past tense of the verb

* the word has three syllables or units of rhythm - dis + app + eared.

* the word uses 11 letters but only 8 phonemes (a phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system) which are expressed in IPA as