You searched for: “morpheme
morpheme (s) (noun), morphemes (pl)
1. A Morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language.
2. The smallest units of speech that convey meaning.
3. The smallest lexical unit of a language; such as, a word, root, affix, or inflectional ending.

Examples of morphemes include: man, run, pro-, -ess, -ing, etc.; and there are many Latin and Greek morphemes which are being used in English.

A word can contain more than one morpheme; for example,"myalgia" can be divided into two morphemes, the prefix my, "muscle" and algia, "pain"; however, the word morose cannot be divided into anything smaller.

In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound); and in written language, morphemes are composed of graphemes (the smallest units of written language).