|
In linguistics, a cranberry morpheme is a bound morpheme that exists only in one lexeme. Examples in English are luke in lukewarm (unrelated to the personal name), and twi in twilight.
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. Phonetically, the first morphemes of gooseberry and raspberry also count as cranberry morphemes, as they don't occur by themselves, but the spelling gives an 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.
See also
|
