Morphemes
What is a Morpheme?
A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. It can be a whole word, like book, or a part of a word, like -s to show plurality in books. Morphemes include prefixes, suffixes, and roots, and they help form and change words. By combining morphemes, we create more complex meanings and build the structure of language.
The Basic Idea
You may remember being taught back in English class that certain prefixes or suffixes provide a clue for the type and meaning of a word. For example, your teacher may have told you that if a word ends in “ly,” it indicates that it is likely an adjective, such as “quickly,” “lovingly,” or “kindly.” Or, if you see the suffix “ise” attached to a base word, like in the case of “advertise” or “revise,” you’re probably dealing with a verb (or a “doing” word, as many teachers call it to help us correctly identify the word category).
These prefixes and suffixes are also known as morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in language. You can imagine them as the Lego blocks of language, which, when added to one another, change the meaning of a word. Sometimes, morphemes can be standalone words like “couch” or “flower.” Other times, they are bound morphemes, such as prefixes and suffixes, that are attached to a base word, such as “re” in “recycle” or “s” in “dogs.” They are morphemes because adding them transforms the meaning in the word— “re” indicates something is repeating or anew, and “s” changes base words to plural.1
Morphemes are important because they help us to decode the meaning of a word unconsciously, allowing us to apprehend unfamiliar terms as we learn language. Let’s pretend you didn’t know the meaning of the word “unbelievable.” By breaking it down into the smallest units of meaning—morphemes—you’d be able to guess its meaning. When broken down into morphemes, we get: un + believe + able.
- Un = a bound morpheme that indicates the negation “not”
- Believe = a free morpheme that means to accept something as true
- Able = a bound morpheme that means “being capable”
By putting these morphemes together, you’d understand that the meaning of the word unbelievable is “not capable of being believed.” In this way, morphemes act as a mental shortcut, allowing our brains to quickly and unconsciously interpret words based on familiar patterns. Whether we’re reading, writing, or speaking, morphemes play a foundational role in how we construct and understand language.
I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.
— Thriller and horror fiction author M.L. Rio in her book If We Were Villains2
About the Author
Emilie Rose Jones
Emilie currently works in Marketing & Communications for a non-profit organization based in Toronto, Ontario. She completed her Masters of English Literature at UBC in 2021, where she focused on Indigenous and Canadian Literature. Emilie has a passion for writing and behavioural psychology and is always looking for opportunities to make knowledge more accessible.
