morphology
NounOpen English WordNet
Noun (4)
- the branch of biology that deals with the structure of animals and plantsType of biology, biological scienceKinds anatomy, general anatomy
- studies of the rules for forming admissible wordsType of grammarKinds derivational morphology, compound morphology, inflectional morphology
- the admissible arrangement of sounds in wordsSynonyms: sound structuresyllable structureword structureType of structureKinds affixation
- the branch of geology that studies the characteristics and configuration and evolution of rocks and land formsSynonyms: geomorphologyType of geophysics, geophysical scienceKinds tectonics, petrology
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
Origin: Gr. μορφή form + -logy: cf. F. morphologie.
1. Biology That branch of biology which deals with the structure of animals and plants, treating of the forms of organs and describing their varieties, homologies, and metamorphoses. See Tectology, and Promorphology.
2. Biology The form and structure of an organism.
3. Linguistics The branch of linguistics which studies the patterns by which words are formed from other words, including inflection, compounding, and derivation.
4. Specifically: The study of the patterns of inflection of words or word classes in any given language; the study of the patterns in which morphemes combine to form words, and the rules for combination; morphemics; as, the morphology of Spanish verbs; also, the inflection patterns themselves.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54 · with additions: GCIDE editors