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definitions

eme

[eem]
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noun Chiefly Scot.

friend.
uncle.

Origin of eme

before 1000; Middle English eem(e), Old English ēam; cognate with Dutch oom, German (arch.) Ohm, Oheim; akin to uncle

-eme

a suffix used principally in linguistics to form nouns with the sense “significant contrastive unit,” at the level of language specified by the stem: morpheme; tagmeme.

Origin of -eme

extracted from phoneme
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for eme

Contemporary Examples of eme

Historical Examples of eme

  • But when darkness fell, unknown hands—were they the hands of Eme Ete?

  • But there was one who was kind to her, Eme Ete, a sister of the chief, who had a sad story.

  • Many weights of lead and marble were found here; one with the inscription, "Eme et habebis" (Buy and you shall have), also scales.

  • Eme Ete came and knelt before her brother and begged him to set free one of them, a weak and timid creature, and this was done.

  • Eme Ete sent Ma a secret message, and she rose and followed him, and coaxed him to take the native oath instead of the ordeal.

British Dictionary definitions for eme

-eme

suffix forming nouns

linguistics indicating a minimal distinctive unit of a specified type in a languagemorpheme; phoneme

Word Origin for -eme

C20: via French, abstracted from phoneme
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for eme

-eme

in linguistics, noted as an active suffix and word-formation element from 1953; from French -ème "unit, sound," from phonème (see phoneme).

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper