"Root" is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family (root is then called base word) It is the most basic form of a word that is able to convey a particular description, thought or meaning. A morpheme can be either a word or it can be just an element of a word. For example, the word “technique” is both a word and a morpheme because it cannot be broken down into any smaller meaningful parts. A more complex example is the word “unintentionally,” which consists of three morphemes. The morphemes are “un” which means not, “intentional” and “ly” which means like. None of these morphemes can be broken up into smaller parts without losing all semantic meaning.

Hi * The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of, root morphemes. ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_word here are the links for the definition of a bound morpheme: * a morpheme that occurs only as part of a larger construction; eg an -s at the end of plural nouns wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webw * In morphology, a bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand alone as an independent word. A free morpheme is one which can stand alone. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bound_morpheme * A morpheme that can only occur when bound to a root morpheme. For example, -ed, -ing, -ly en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bound_morpheme * A morpheme that has meaning but only when it is used in conjunction with a word. www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415485395/glossary.asp Also a unit of meaning, such as a prefix or a suffix that has specific meaning, but must be attached to a root word. elearndesign.org/teachspecialed/modules/ocada7081_norm2/15/…

An example is "huckle", as in "huckleberry". The word itself isn’t actually a word, it’s a bound root morpheme. This requires a brief lesson in linguistics. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaningful language. "Girl" is a morpheme, as is "skip." "Girlfriend" has two morphemes, as does "skipper". Some morphemes can be free (as in girl, skip, and type) whereas other morphemes are bound (as in huck, funct, and ept). A free morpheme has meaning, a bound morpheme does not. In order to make the bound morphemes make sense, you have to add another morpheme. Funct must become defunct and ept must become inept. So, to review, there are free morphemes and bound morphemes. A free morpheme can stand alone, and a bound morpheme must be attached to another morpheme before it makes sense.