Noun

1. The smallest linguistic unit within a word that can carry a meaning, such as "un-", "break", and "-able" in the word "unbreakable".

   The word pigs consists of two morphemes: pig (a particular animal) and s (indication of the plural).

   The word werewolves' consists of morphemes: "were" (~ man), "wolf" (a particular animal), "es" (plural), and "'" (indicating possessive).

Related terms

• free morpheme
• bound morpheme
• allomorph
• lexeme
• lemma
• word form

See also

• chereme
• chroneme
• grapheme
• lexeme
• listeme
• phoneme
• toneme