This is because words in Semitic languages are formed from triliteral, the vowels being used to indicate inflectional or derived forms.

The goal is not only to learn the main word in the entry, but to be able to derive other forms of the word.

An athame, a ceremonial black-handled knife, is used in Wicca and derived forms of neopagan witchcraft.

A word family is the base form of a word plus its inflected forms and derived forms made from affixes ().

Many secondary metabolites from endophyte-plant interactions have also been isolated and used in raw or derived forms to produce a variety of drugs treating many conditions.

There are also derived forms:

Like the personal pronouns, inflected prepositions have emphatic forms, derived by adding the following suffixes:

For example, Kham derives reciprocal forms from reflexive forms by total reduplication:

The verb yabaia 'give' is anomalous in a different way by having irregularly derived non-third-person object-indexing forms.

Alternative, non-shellfish derived forms of glucosamine are available.