913: -drome Jun 9, 2017

Most suffixes, like '-ness' and most other derivational suffixes for example, can be found at the end of words without any similarity in meaning, even though they are syntactically similar. Combining forms on the other hand do have an impact on the meaning of the word, such as 'Austro-' as a prefix or '-crat' as a suffix. With that in mind, it might be confusing to look as the '-drome' in 'aerodrome' ('airdrome') or 'palindrome', for while the meanings are not apparently related, removing the ending of those words would leave 'aero-' and 'palin' which are not words on their own, as would be the case were it a suffix. You might assume also that the ending is completely coincidental, as does sometimes happen, but this is not what the element is considered to be. '-drome' is said to be a combining form simply for the reason that it adds semantic meaning; it denotes the idea of running or of courses like that at an aerodrome ('airport') or velodrome coming from the Greek 'dromos' meaning ‘running’ on a track, and likewise 'palindrome' is something that runs, so to speak, again. It should be noted that 'aero-' is also a combining for, but 'air' is not.