bound form

bound form

n.

A linguistic element that always occurs as part of another word, such as -ly in lovely.

Thesaurus

Noun

1.

bound form - a morpheme that occurs only as part of a larger construction; eg an -s at the end of plural nouns bound morpheme morpheme - minimal meaningful language unit; it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units combining form - a bound form used only in compounds; "`hemato-' is a combining form in words like `hematology'" affix - a linguistic element added to a word to produce an inflected or derived form