In linguistic morphology, a cranberry morpheme (or fossilized term) is a type of bound morpheme that cannot be assigned a meaning nor a grammatical function, but nonetheless serves to distinguish one word from the other.^[1], Examples in English include: Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ... Bound morphemes can only occur when attached to root morphemes. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

• mit in permit, commit, and submit
• ceive in receive, perceive, and conceive
• twi in twilight
• spick and span in spick-and-span
• fro in to and fro
• cob in cobweb, from the obsolete word coppe for a spider
• rasp in raspberry, from the obsolete word raspis for a raspberry

The canonical example is the cran of cranberry. It is unrelated to the word cran meaning a case of herrings, and though it actually comes from crane (the bird), this is not superficially obvious. Likewise, mul exists only in mulberry (mul is from Latin morus, the mulberry tree). Phonetically, the first morphemes of gooseberry and raspberry also count as cranberry morphemes, as they don't occur by themselves, but the spelling gives a clue to their obscure origins. Compare these to blackberry, which has two obvious unbound morphemes. The first morphemes of loganberry and boysenberry are derived from names. Canonical is an adjective derived from canon. ... Species Vaccinium erythrocarpum Vaccinium macrocarpon Vaccinium microcarpum Vaccinium oxycoccus Approximate ranges of the cranberries in sect. ... Genera Grus Anthropoides Balearica Bugeranus Cranes are large, long-legged and long-necked birds of the order Gruiformes, and family Gruidae. ... Species See text Mulberry (Morus) is a genus of 10–16 species of deciduous trees native to warm temperate and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa and North America, with the majority of the species native to Asia. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Binomial name Ribes uva-crispa L. Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ribes uva-crispa The Gooseberry Ribes uva-crispa (syn. ... Binomial name Rubus idaeus L. The Raspberry or Red Raspberry (Rubus idaeus) is a plant that produces a tart, sweet, red composite fruit in summer or early autumn. ... The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device introduced in 1999 which supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... A boysenberry is a cross among a blackberry, red raspberry and loganberry. ...

Cranberry morphemes can arise in several ways:

• A dialect word can become part of the standard language in a compound, but not in its root form: e.g. blatherskite, "one who talks nonsense", has Scots skite meaning "contemptible person".
• A word can become obsolete in its root form but remain current in a compound: e.g. lukewarm from Middle English luke "tepid".
• A compound loanword may have a recognisable native cognate for one element but not the other: e.g. hinterland is from German hinter "behind" and land "land".
• A loanword may have one part misanalysed to a false cognate: e.g. a taffrail is a type of rail, but the word comes from Dutch tafereel "carved panel".

Consider this example of morphemes from http://www.yorku.ca/linguist/Courses/2130/documents/LING2130-06-2.pdf Scots is an Anglic variety spoken in Scotland, where it is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic spoken by some in the Highlands and Islands (especially the Hebrides). ... Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the... A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ... Cognate (Latin: cognatus co+gnatus, ie. ... The meaning of hinterland and its history. ... Folk etymology or popular etymology is a linguistic term for a category of false etymology which has grown up in popular lore, as opposed to one which arose in scholarly usage. ... False cognates are a pair of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. ...

"Are the following words morphologically simple (monomorphemic) or morphologically complex (polymorphemic)?"

spit snail catch carrot carpet spider uncle Spit may refer to: Look up spit in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The name snail applies to most members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells. ... Baseball In baseball, a catch occurs when a fielder gains secure possession of a batted ball in flight, and maintains possession until he voluntarily or negligently releases the ball. ... Binomial name Daucus carota L. Percentages are relative to US recommendations for adults. ... A carpet is any loom-woven, felted textile or grass floor covering. ... Diversity 111 families, 40,000 species Suborders Mesothelae Mygalomorphae Araneomorphae  See Table of Families Wikispecies has information related to: Spiders A South American Argiope Spiders are predatory invertebrate animals with two body segments, eight legs, no chewing mouth parts and no wings. ... Uncle may refer to: A family relationship, see Cousin chart A cry of surrender An idiom: Dutch uncle, a person who delivers stern lectures Uncle Sam, a national personification of the United States Uncle Tom, a pejorative term for a black person Uncle Tom Cobley, a British folk saying meaning...

Don’t they contain: pit, it, nail, ail, cat, car, rot, pet, -er, un-?

This linguistic morphology article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Image File history File links Linguistics_stub. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

See also

• Unpaired word - words like "unkempt", "ruthless"

An unpaired word is one that, according to the usual rules of the language, would appear to have a related word but does not. ...

References

1. ^ "Cranberry morpheme" from the Lexicon of Linguistics [1]

Wiktionary link

• Appendix:Orphaned_words