Leaf Spelling Dictionary

Is the ending -ete or -ate?

schwaEmarginate has one stressed syllable, MAR, and four unstressed ones. Those four vowels are all reduced in speech and all guessable in writing.

heard asemarginete
spelledemarginate
saidee-MAR-jin-ut

-ate. emarginate.

The two endings sound identical once they are unstressed, and English keeps both: obsolete, complete, delete on one side, ornate, sedate, emarginate on the other. Botanical shape adjectives come from the Latin -atus, so they always take the a.

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