Sometimes raising awareness to this word formation aspect of English can be the light that dispels the darkness of dictionary worship.
Since English is a language that has thousands of words from other languages, a brief etymology of commonly used prefixes and suffixes would do much good.
For example the OCT prefix comes from the Latin OCTO which means EIGHT. If you look at most English words beginning with OCT, the meaning is never too far from eight. So ask yourself for example: What is an octopus, octogenarian, octagon, octave, and octet?
In a similar line, TELE- has its roots in Greek, which means far or distant. So what do words like telecommunication, television, telephone and telex have in common?