morpheme
nounUK /ˈmɔː.fiːm/ · CA, US /ˈmɔɹ.fim/
Etymology From French morphème. Ultimately from Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ, “shape, form”). By surface analysis, morph + -eme.
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Human sciences, Linguistic morphology, Linguistics, Morphology, Sciences The smallest linguistic unit within a word that can carry a meaning. It may be a letter, a syllable, or otherwise.
- Just as a regiment is ultimately made up of soldiers, so the sentence is of morphemes—they are its ultimate constituents.1970, Thomas Pyles, John Algeo, English: An Introduction to Language, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 135:
- There is therefore a natural tendency in both American and European structural linguistics to insist that the word should be syntactically decomposed. For writers such as Hockett (1958), or for that matter the early Chomsky (1957), the indivisible unit of grammar was the morpheme, and the relationship of morpheme to morpheme within the word […] was to be handled no differently from that of word to word in any larger structure.1993, Peter Matthews, “Central Concepts of Syntax”, in Joachim Jacobs, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Theo Vennemann, editors, Syntax, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 95:
- Synonyms
- morpheme
- Derived terms
- bimorpheme, bound morpheme, cranberry morpheme, empty morpheme, free morpheme, monomorpheme, morphemed, morphemehood, morphemic, morphemics, morphemize, null morpheme, root morpheme, submorpheme, tonomorpheme, zero morpheme
- Related terms
44 terms
allomorph, lemma, word form, cat, sharp, smart, anti-, pre-, re-, non-, un-, -able, -hood, -ity, -ness, -o-, -s-, -bloody-, Anglo-, biblio-, bio-, chrono-, electro-, geo-, hemato-, mechano-, nucleo-, techno-, thermo-, -archy, -centric, -cephalic, -cracy, -metre, -philia, -phobia, -graphy, -logy, cran, luke, morph, interfix, :Category:Morphemes by language, :Category:English morphemes- Hypernyms
- linguistic unit
- Hyponyms
- affix, infix, prefix, root, suffix, free morpheme, bound morpheme, cranberry morpheme, circumfix, confix, suprafix, derivational suffix, inflectional suffix
- Holonyms
- word