Every English word is a seed. Color each part with the language it sprang from.
Every word is a passport full of stamps
Germinate asks one question of each word: where did each of its parts come from? English is a borrowing language, and most of its longer words are quiet international collaborations. Television bolts the Greek tele- (“far”) onto the Latin visio (“sight”) — a hybrid purists once hated. Beautiful is the French beauté wearing a native Old English tail, -ful. Automobile is Greek auto- (“self”) plus Latin mobilis (“moving”).
The fun is learning the fingerprints. ph almost always marks a Greek borrowing (phone, graph, philosophy). A word starting al- is often Arabic, where al means “the” — alcohol, algebra, alchemy. Endings like -ful, -ness, and -ward are homegrown Old English; -tion and -ity are Latin; a ch said as “sh” is French.
Trace each part to its language and you're reading the history of England off a single word: the Germanic core, the Norse the Vikings left, the French that arrived in 1066, and the Latin, Greek, and Arabic that scholarship and trade carried in. The full field guide to the six strata is a click away.