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morphemes

  • plural
    of morpheme.
    morpheme
    noun
    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.

Example Sentences

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The researchers also tested traditional linguistic elements such as phonemes and morphemes.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 21, 2026

In a multistage process of evolution, words describing diverse body parts had changed into morphemes referring to different zones and fused with content words to yield meaning.

From Scientific American ● Jun. 14, 2023

Those words are made up of morphemes, small elements that change their meaning depending on how they are combined.

From New York Times ● Apr. 22, 2023

At the time, Leben was teaching a course on the structure of English words, and Lexicon recruited him for a project: to create a list of morphemes, those parts of words that contain meaning.

From New York Times ● Jan. 15, 2015

The word obstetrician, wrote Dr. Young, has as its Latin morphemes ob, which means across, and stare, which means to stand.

From Slate ● May 23, 2012