matching whole words while ignoring affixes of words using regex

Question

I am learning a new language and I have created a DB with aprox. 2500 words and 2500 examples of the words. I created a PHP/MySQL web UI with basically shows pictures for each

Answer 1

Is this what are you looking for?

(\b(pre1|pre2)?WORD(suf1|suf2)?\b)

Online demo

If you are looking for whole line as a match then try below regex and get if from matched group at index 1

(.*(\b(pre1|pre2)?WORD(suf1|suf2)?\b).*)

Online demo

Use preg_match_all to get all the matched groups.