morpheme

American  

[mawr-feem] / ˈmɔr fim /

noun

Linguistics.

1. any of the minimal grammatical units of a language, each constituting a word or meaningful part of a word, that cannot be divided into smaller independent grammatical parts, as the, write, or the -ed of waited.

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morpheme British  

/ ˈmɔːfiːm /

noun

1. linguistics a speech element having a meaning or grammatical function that cannot be subdivided into further such elements

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Other Word Forms

• morphemic adjective
• morphemically adverb

Etymology

Origin of morpheme

1895–1900; < French morphème; morph-, -eme

Compare meaning

How does morpheme compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• morpheme vs. phoneme

Example Sentences

Important, too, was the morpheme a-, which referred to the mouth and, more broadly, to origins.

From Scientific American

It became apparent that someone needed to build a curriculum and teaching program around the morphemes, including a color-coded system for grouping them, which Mr. Maracle did through trial and error.

From New York Times

On the pretext of performing usability testing for Sparkle Dungeon 5, she is taught “power morphemes” — ways to condense layers of meaning into abstract sounds that can bend real-world physics, shattering glass and folding space-time.

From New York Times

She draws pictures illustrating each mouth morpheme — the lip and tongue postures that act as adjectives and adverbs.

From New York Times

I was imitating something linguistically unique to sign language called “mouth morphemes” — moving your tongue rapidly to demonstrate distance or swelling your cheeks like balloons to show size.

From New York Times

Related Words

• concept
• expression
• name
• phrase
• sound
• term