Morpheme

A morpheme is the smallest meaning -bearing unit of language.

Examples

Kangaroo is one morpheme. Kangaroos is two morphemes, kangaroo and plural -s. The -s expresses the meaning 'many' or 'more than one' in this example.

Polysemy

Morpheme may also be used for 'grammatical morpheme', see morpheme (i.e. grammatical morpheme).

Synonym

• moneme (Martinet)

Origin

The term morpheme was coined by Jan Baudouin de Courtenay in c. 1880. It is based on Greek morph- 'form' and the suffix -eme, on the analogy of the term phoneme. See Mugdan (1986) for detailed discussion.

Reference

Mugdan, Joachim. 1986. Was ist eigentlich ein Morphem?

Other languages

German Morphem Spanish morfema