introduction, induction, production, reduction, subduction. why are they similar and why they aren’t?
I looked this up to find out if all these words are really related. Words that look very similar are not always related. But in this case they are.
The root is ‘duce’.
Introduce, Induce, etc.
‘Duce’ means to lead, to bring (together), or something similar. It’s a very old root.
The prefixes do not come from the same source languages. You have to be careful trying to put prefixes and suffixes together with the original root. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s probably better just to memorize the meaning.
For example “induction” has at least three very different meanings. So you have to memorize them and use the context to determine the meaning.