When Latin went out of business, many Latin prepositions got jobs as prefixes in English. For instance, the Latin preposition “ad” meaning, “to, toward” became the English prefixes ac-, ad-, af-, ag-, al-, an-, ap-, ar-, as-, at-. This process is called assimilation. By the way, did you notice the “as” prefix in assimilation. Yeah, it comes from the Latin “ad”.
Which leads to today’s word.
Assimilate: to become similar.
From Latin ad (to, toward) and simulare (to make like).
In English, old Latin prefixes often assimilate, causing students all kinds of spelling trouble. For example, “ad” often changes its final letter according to the first letter of the word it joins. So, the Latin word Adscribere (to state in writing) becomes the English word ascribe.
