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What is the difference between morpheme and contraction?

morpheme | contraction |

As nouns the difference between morpheme and contraction

is that morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit within a word that can carry a meaning, such as "un-", "break", and "-able" in the word "unbreakable" while contraction is a reversible reduction in size.

morpheme

English

(wikipedia morpheme)

Noun

(en noun)
  • (linguistic morphology) The smallest linguistic unit within a word that can carry a meaning, such as "un-", "break", and "-able" in the word "unbreakable".
    • The word pigs'' consists of two morphemes : ''pig'' (a particular animal) and ''s'' (indication of the plural).
    The word werewolves''' consists of four morphemes: "''were''" (~ man), "''wolf''" (a particular animal), "''es " (plural), and " ' " (indicating possessive).

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Hyponyms

    * prefix * suffix * affix

    Holonyms

    * word

    Derived terms

    * morphemic

    Related terms

    * free morpheme * bound morpheme * allomorph * lexeme * lemma * sememe * word form

    See also

    * chereme * chroneme * grapheme * lexeme * listeme * phoneme * toneme

    contraction

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A reversible reduction in size.
  • (economics) A period of economic decline or negative growth.
    • The country's economic contraction was caused by high oil prices.
  • (biology) A shortening of a muscle when it is used.
  • (medicine) A strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth.
  • (linguistics) A process whereby one or more sounds of a free morpheme (a word) are lost or reduced, such that it becomes a bound morpheme (a clitic) that attaches phonologically to an adjacent word.
    • In English ''didn't'', ''that's'', and ''wanna'', the endings ''-n't'', ''-'s'', and ''-a'' arose by contraction .
  • (English orthography) A word with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe, usually resulting from the above process.
    • "Don't" is a contraction of "do not."
  • (medicine) Contracting a disease.
    • The contraction of AIDS from toilet seats is extremely rare.
  • (phonetics) Syncope, the loss of sounds from within a word.
  • The acquisition of something, generally negative.
    • Our contraction of debt in this quarter has reduced our ability to attract investors.
  • (medicine) A distinct stage of wound healing, wherein the wound edges are gradually pulled together.

    • Antonyms

    * expansion * dilatation

    Derived terms

    * contractional * contractionary * hypercontraction * supercontraction

    Related terms

    * contract * contractation * contractive

    See also

    * omission * *