morpheme
[mawr-feem]
- 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.Compare allomorph(def 2), morph(def 1).
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Origin of morpheme
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
soundtermconceptnamephraseexpressiondesignationlocutionidiomusageutterancemorphemevocablelexemefundamentalsmorphemeselementssyllabarysymbolsideographmorpheme
- linguistics a speech element having a meaning or grammatical function that cannot be subdivided into further such elements
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Word Origin
C20: from French, from Greek morphē form, coined on the model of phoneme; see -eme
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
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Word Origin and History for morpheme
n.
"part of a word which contains the affixes," 1896, from German morpheme, coined 1895 by Polish-born linguist Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929), from Greek morphe "form, shape" (see Morpheus), on analogy of phonème.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper