eme

Definition: The linguist's favourite suffix when coining names for atomic units of lexical, grammatical, and phonological structure.
Example: grapheme, lexeme, morpheme, phoneme, sememe, and toneme.
Oxford English Dictionary: The suffix's first OED citation is from 1953:
"A by-product of Linguistic Analysis … has been the sudden burgeoning of the -eme family."
(W. J. Entwistle Aspects of Lang. iii. 79 )


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