any of the minimal grammatical units of a language, each constituting a word or meaningful part of a word, that cannot be divided into smaller independent grammatical parts, as the, write, or the -ed of waited.Compare allomorph(def. 2), morph(def. 1).
mor·pheme (môr'fēm') n. A meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word, such as man, or a word element, such as -ed in walked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts.
[French morphème, blend of Greek morphē, form and French phonème, phoneme; see phoneme.] mor·phem'ic adj., mor·phem'i·cal·ly adv.