When is an English root word like a Mafia don?

Here’s a philological game to pass an idle moment: try to think of basic English roots that attach to a wide variety of prefixes to form new words. I often find myself going through them in my head, always looking for the best-connected root — the Vito Corleone of English roots, if you like. Is it perhaps √SPECT “to look”, with its halo of aspect, expect, inspect, prospect, respect, suspect? Or √DICT “to say, speak”, with its wider nimbus of addict, apodictic, edict, contradict, indict, interdict, predict? And by the way, benediction, malediction, jurisdiction, valedictory, verdict, etc., don’t count, since these don’t involve proper prefixes, but are actually two roots linked together.

So, which English root has the most connections? Which is the biggest don, making the largest crowd of English prefixes an offer they can’t refuse? The basic rules of the game are: (a) start with a basic English root, usually describing a simple, concrete action — that is, not just any abstract root whatsoever, but one of the fundamental roots at the beginning of the English evolutionary chain; then, (b) see how many standard prefixes (not other roots) you can tack on to make real English words. (I suppose one could try this game in other languages as well, if they are constructed along similar morphological lines. It should work for most of the European languages, if perhaps not as well as for English.)

Does that sound like fun to you? I usually do it in my head, so I don’t have any systematic written record of my meanderings among the prefixes. But so far, the best-connected roots I think I’ve found are √JECT “to throw” and √DUCT “to lead”. For each, I’ve come up with twelve combinations of prefix and root — have I missed any? Note that these must be distinct. One cannot add adjacent or ejaculate, or conducive or educe, even though these are words with somewhat different meanings, because their prefixes are already accounted for. Can anyone think of a fundamental English root with more than twelve connections?

For √JECT “to throw”, I’ve got:

• Abject: “thrown away from [something better]”
• Adjective: “thrown toward, near [a noun]”
• Conjecture: “thrown together [to make a guess]”
• Dejected: “thrown apart, away”
• Eject: “throw out, away from”
• Inject: “throw in(to)”
• Interject: “throw among, between [other words]”
• Object: “throw against” [e.g., a point of argument]
• Project: “throw forward” [e.g., your voice]
• Reject: “throw back”
• Subject: “throw under(neath)”
• Trajectory: “thrown across, through, beyond”

And for √DUC(T) “to lead”:

• Abduct: “lead away”
• Adduce: “lead toward [i.e., bring forward]”
• Conduct: “lead together” [e.g., a symphony]
• Deduce: “lead out” [e.g., a conclusion]
• Educate: “lead out of [childhood, into the adult world]”
• Induce: “lead into” [i.e., persuade]
• Introduce: “lead into [something]”
• Produce: “lead forward [i.e., bring out]”
• Reduce: “lead back”
• Seduce: “lead apart, astray”
• Subduct: “lead under(neath)”
• Transduction: “led across, through, beyond”

Aren’t word-games fun? Along similar lines, my friend Gary and I used to coin new words by taking existing prefix + root combi-nations, and shuffling new prefixes into them. For example, we usually say that the opposite of the impossible is simply the possible, but shouldn’t it be the *expossible (on the model of impose and expose)? Or, if “making a prediction” is guessing about a future outcome, would “making a postdiction” be saying “I told you so!”, after the fact?