Privative

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A privative, named from Latin privare^[1], "to deprive", is a particle, usually a prefix in Indo-European languages, which negates or inverts the value of the stem of the word. In English there are 3 primary privative suffices, all cognate from PIE:

un- from West Germanic; e.g. unprecedented, unbelievable
in- from Latin; e.g. incapable, inarticulate.
a-, called alpha privative, from Ancient Greek α-, αν-; e.g. apathetic, abiogenesis.

These all stem from a PIE syllabic nasal privative *n̥-, the zero ablaut grade of the negation *ne, i.e. "n" used as a vowel, as in some English pronunciations of "button". This is the source of the 'n' in 'an-' privative prefixed nouns deriving from the Greek, which had both. For this reason, it appears as an- before vowel, e.g. anorexia, anesthesia.

The same prefix appears in Sanskrit, also as a-, an-. In North Germanic languages, the -n- has disappeared and Old Norse has ú- (e.g. ú-dáins-akr), Danish and Norwegian have u-, whereas Swedish uses o, and Icelandic uses the etymologically related ó.