hyphenate comes from hyphen + -ate, from Late Latin hyphen, from Ancient Greek hyphen ('together, in one'), from hypo ('under') + hen ('one'). Morphologically, the ending is part of the etymology: the suffix is attached to the older base named in the history, producing a later English derivative. In present English, the verb sense is "to join or divide with a hyphen", so the historical development ends in a clearly identifiable modern dictionary use. The same base also appears in related forms such as hyphen, and in derivatives such as hyphenation and hyphenated. Its semantic neighborhood includes hyphen, which helps locate the modern sense without adding a separate etymological claim. The named historical forms include Ancient Greek hyphen.