monomorphemic
- adjective
- /ˌmɒnəˈmɔːrfɪmɪk/
- Specialized
:
monomorfo
- A monomorphemic word like 'cat' cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts.
- monomorphemic words
Examples
-
Words that consist of only a free morpheme are monomorphemic, and words that contain both free and bound morphemes are multimorphemic.
Academic text (2014) -
At times in this activity, we will provide examples of words that can be monomorphemic or multimorphemic depending on the context (e.g., band vs. banned) and ask students to consider whether the segmentation will differ.
Academic text (2014) -
There is mixed evidence on the role of morphological awareness in spelling monomorphemic words.
Academic text (2014) -
In linguistics, 'tree' is an example of a monomorphemic term, as it consists of only one morpheme.
-
The English word 'book' is classified as monomorphemic because it has no affixes or smaller units of meaning.
How Many Morphemes
Surface Forms
Morphology
monomorphemic = morphemic (opaque) = mono + morphem + ic
The word is built straightforwardly by adding mono- 'one' to morphemic, yielding 'having one morpheme'.
Etymology
Monomorphemic comes from the parts mono- meaning 'one' and morpheme meaning 'a unit of meaning'. So a monomorphemic word is made of just one small meaning unit, like 'dog', and cannot be split into smaller meaningful parts.
