Meaning & use
morphemes
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The smallest meaningful units of language, which cannot be divided further without losing their meaning.
See it in a sentence
The word 'unhappiness' is made up of three morphemes: un-, happy, and -ness.
Linguists analyze how morphemes combine to form new words in a language.
A note on using this word
A core term in linguistics; morphemes can be whole words or smaller pieces like prefixes and suffixes.
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