morpheme

See also: Morpheme and morphème

English
WOTD – 17 May 2012

Etymology

From French morphème, equivalent to morph +‎ -eme. Ultimately from Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ, “shape, form”).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈmɔː(ɹ)fiːm/
  • Audio (UK)(file)

Noun
Examples
  • The word pigs consists of two morphemes: pig (a particular animal) and s (indication of the plural).
  • The word werewolves consists of three morphemes: were (~ man), wolf (a particular animal), es (plural).
  • The word feet consists of two morphemes: foot (a body part) and i-mutation (plural).

morpheme (plural morphemes)

  1. (linguistic morphology) The smallest linguistic unit within a word that can carry a meaning.
    Coordinate terms: chereme, chroneme, grapheme, lexeme, listeme, phoneme, sememe, taxeme, toneme

Synonyms

Hyponyms

Holonyms

Derived terms

Translations

See also

Further reading
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.