morpheme

Plural: morphemes

Noun

• The smallest meaningful unit in a language.
• minimal meaningful language unit; it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units
• The smallest linguistic unit within a word that can carry a meaning. It may be a letter, a syllable, or otherwise.

Examples

• Understanding morphemes helps in building longer words in Scrabble.

Synonyms

morpheme

Related Words

-able, -archy, -bloody-, -centric, -cephalic, -cracy, -graphy, -hood, -ity, -logy, -metre, -ness, -o-, -philia, -phobia, -s-, :Category:English morphemes, :Category:Morphemes by language, Anglo-, allomorph, anti-, biblio-, bio-, cat, chrono-, cran, electro-, geo-, hemato-, interfix, lemma, luke, mechano-, morph, non-, nucleo-, pre-, re-, sharp, smart, techno-, thermo-, un-, word form