-a vs a-

-a

suffix
  • Marks nouns, with a foundation in Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese, implying femininity. 

  • Marks singular nouns, with a foundation in Greek or Latin, often implying femininity, especially when contrasted with words terminating in -us. 

  • to (infinitive marker) 

  • Changes an element or substance into an oxide. 

  • Added for metrical reasons to songs, poetry and verse, or as an empty filler syllable to other speech. 

a-

prefix
  • Towards; Used to indicate direction, reduction to, increase to, change into, or motion. 

  • Forming verbs with the sense away, up, on, out. 

  • Forming verbs with the sense of intensified action. 

  • In, on, at; used to show a state, condition, or manner. Also passing into sense 2. 

  • Away from. 

  • Of, from. 

  • Used as a prefix to verbs in the sense of remaining in the same condition. Actively doing something. 

  • In, into. Also passing into sense 5. 

  • A syllable added by a speaker supposed to be Italian, or used to mimic or mock Italian accents; a pseudo-Italian syllable. 

  • In the direction of, or toward. 

  • Forming words with the sense of wholly, or utterly out. 

  • Not, without, opposite of. 

  • Used to form the past participle of a verb. 

How often have the words -a and a- occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )