Morphemes: The Smallest Units of Meaning

Learn to split words into morphemes, the smallest pieces that still carry meaning.

Long words look scary until you notice they are built from smaller meaningful pieces called morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that still means something. It is not the same as a syllable: 'pencil' has two syllables but only one morpheme, because neither 'pen' nor 'cil' carries the meaning on its own. Now try 'unbreakable'. Split it by meaning, not by sound: un- (not) + break (the base word) + -able (can be done). Put the meanings back together and you get 'not able to be broken'.

That is three morphemes doing three jobs. When you meet a word you have never seen, such as 'reheatable', you can run the same check: re- (again) + heat + -able (can be) means 'can be heated again'. Morpheme analysis will not solve every word, but it turns a wall of letters into a few familiar parts.

• 1A morpheme is the smallest piece of a word that carries meaning.
• 2Morphemes and syllables are different things.
• 3Split by meaning, then rebuild the meaning from the parts.