What are the smallest units of meaning in words called?

• A. Justified Print
• B. Morphemes
• C. Diphthongs
• D. Encode

Answer: (B)

Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in words. They can be free morphemes, like “book” or “run,” which can stand alone as words, or bound morphemes, like the plural suffix “-s” in “cats” or the past tense “-ed” in “walked,” which attach to a base word to modify meaning or show grammar. Words can consist of one morpheme or several; for example, “unhappiness” has three morphemes: “un-” (not), “happy” (root), and “-ness” (state or quality). Understanding morphemes helps explain how language builds meaning and expresses tense, number, and other grammatical functions. Diphthongs are vowel sounds, not units of meaning, and other distractors don’t describe how meaning is built in words.