mor·pheme (môr f m )n. A meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word, such as man, or a word element, such as -ed in walked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. [French morphème, blend of Greek morph , form and French phonème, phoneme; see phoneme.]mor·phem ic adj.mor·phem i·cal·ly adv. |
morpheme [ˈmɔːfiːm]
n
(Linguistics) Linguistics a speech element having a meaning or grammatical function that cannot be subdivided into further such elements
[from French, from Greek morphē form, coined on the model of phoneme; see -eme]
morphemic adj
morphemically adv
ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
| Noun | 1. | morpheme - minimal meaningful language unit; it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units language unit, linguistic unit - one of the natural units into which linguistic messages can be analyzed allomorph - a variant phonological representation of a morpheme; "the final sounds of `bets' and `beds' and `horses' and `oxen' are allomorphs of the English plural morpheme" free form, free morpheme - a morpheme that can occur alone bound form, bound morpheme - a morpheme that occurs only as part of a larger construction; eg an -s at the end of plural nouns classifier - a word or morpheme used in some languages in certain contexts (such as counting) to indicate the semantic class to which the counted item belongs ending, termination - the end of a word (a suffix or inflectional ending or final morpheme); "I don't like words that have -ism as an ending" |
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