Which term describes words sharing the same root with different affixes, as in love, lovely, loving, unloved?

• A. Word family
• B. Root set
• C. Morphological group
• D. Affix family

Answer: (A)

Words that share the same root and become related through different affixes form a word family. Here, the root is love, and by adding various affixes you get related words: loving (adding -ing), lovely (adding -ly), and unloved (adding the prefix un- to the past participle). They all revolve around the same core meaning and are built from the same base, just with different endings or prefixes to express different grammatical roles or nuanced meanings. That shared root and the way affixes create a family of related words is exactly what the term word family captures. Other labels like root set or affix family aren’t the standard terms used to describe this familiar pattern in language, so word family is the best fit.