morpheme
/ˈmɔɹ.fim/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.28 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Just as a regiment is ultimately made up of soldiers, so the sentence is of morphemes—they are its ultimate constituents."
- "There is therefore a natural tendency in both American and European structural linguistics to insist that the word should be syntactically decomposed. For writers such as Hockett (1958), or for that matter the early Chomsky (1957), the indivisible unit of grammar was the morpheme, and the relationship of morpheme to morpheme within the word […] was to be handled no differently from that of word to word in any larger structure."
Etymology
From French morphème. Ultimately from Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ, “shape, form”). By surface analysis, morph + -eme.
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: morphème, μορφή
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈmɔɹ.fim/
- British English: /ˈmɔː.fiːm/