I have a confession to make.

For many years now – for as long as I can remember – I’ve had an addiction.

Sometimes it’s all I think about.

It’s been weighing on my heart to share this with someone.

I hope I can trust you to make the best of what I’m about to say.

I’m a morpheme addict.

Amuse-bouche:

Why don’t the French make their omelets with three eggs? Because one egg is « un œuf. »

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Today’s Wonderful Word: “morpheme.”

Definition: A meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided.

Examples: “in,” “come,” “-ing.” These morphemes form the word “incoming.”

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A morpheme is the smallest meaningful lexical item in a language. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. There are two types of morphemes – free and bound.

Free morphemes can stand alone and keep their specific meaning. On the other hand, bound morphemes can’t stand alone. Bound morphemes are most commonly prefixes and suffixes such as “pre-” and “-ly.”

« Un » is a morpheme and a word – meaning “a,” “an,” or “one” – on its own, so it is considered a free morpheme. « Œuf » is also a free morpheme, meaning “egg” in English.

Morphemes are not to be confused with syllables. “Enough” cannot be broken down further without losing meaning. “Enough” is only one morpheme, despite having two syllables.

Most importantly, morphemes make up words (“word” = free morpheme; “-s” = bound morpheme). And words are wonderful. I can’t get enough of them. I’m a morpheme addict. And I hope you are, too.

Well, that’s un œuf for now.

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Answer to Saturday’s riddle:

Beauty.

Explanation: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (bee holder).

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