The
simplest unit of
meaning in a
language.
For example, in English, the word "faster" is composed of two morphemes:
Confusion often results between the concepts of morphemes and syllables: the word "arrange" has two syllables, but is composed of only one morpheme--"range" is a separate word, but its meaning has no connection to that of "arrange". Also, one can note that {ar-} can't serve as an independent morpheme either--it adds nothing to the meaning of the base word.
On the other hand, sometimes a single syllable can carry more than one morpheme; consider "kicked". There are two distinct units of meaning here:
It is pronounced as a single syllable "kikt", but it can be broken down into two separate morphemes.