Learn English – Where is the root morpheme in the Modern English word “absent”

etymologymorphology

I can't say whether the root morpheme in "absent" is "ab-" or "abs-". (From an etymological point of view, ab- appears to be a negative prefix — from M.Fr. absent (O.Fr. ausent), from L. absentem (nom. absens), prp. of abesse "be away from, be absent" — from O.Fr. absence, from L. absentia, noun of state from absentem (nom. absens), prp. of abesse "be away from, be absent," from ab- "away" + esse "to be").

On the one hand, "absent" may be analyzed and compared with "present" (pre-/ ab- sent), but in this case it's clear that we can't consider -s- as a common root for those semantically related words, because it doesn't seem to be the lexical core of these words at all. On the other hand in the case of "abnormal" and "normal" this negative prefix ab- is easily identified.

Best Answer

Interesting question with an interesting answer. I understand what @subic is trying to get at. Taken from Dictionary.com, here is the etymology of "absent":

1350–1400; Middle English < Latin absent- (stem of absēns, present participle of abesse to be away ( ab- ab- + -s- be ( see is) + -ent- -ent))

@subic, were you wondering over the 's'? Well, I looked up further, and I realised why the 's' was there at all. From Wiktionary:

From Middle French absent < Old French ausent < Latin absent-, the stem of absens, present participle of abesse (“to be away from”), formed from ab + esse (“to be”).

Note that "abesse" as you said was the original word, but the Latin word is "absent-", whose root is "absens". IT was here, that 's' first got stuck in. Why? I looked up the Latin absens, and I got this:

Present active participle of absum (“be away from, absent”)

So, absens came from absum, so I looked up absum, and I found this:

From ab (“from”) + sum (“be”).

The 's' originally came from 'sum', and along with all the deriving and everything, remained there, as it was derived from 'absum'. In fact, if you looked up "abesse", you would find that it is actually a derivative of "absum"!

So, the thing that is confusing, is abesse, which is actually a :

present active infinitive of absum

So, I hope that answered your questions.

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