What Is a Word?

Words are the fundamental building blocks for languages. They represent the smallest unit of speech to have some conventional agreed meaning among a group of speakers of a language and to which other grammatical rules of the language can be applied.

This is a practical definition, as linguists do not have universal agreement on what qualifies as a word. To illustrate why, you could take an example such as “I will,” which is clearly two words but once you create the shortened form “I’ll,” then it already starts to become more difficult to apply a definition, without having to start thinking about exceptions or deviations from the rule. We know this is still two words but, as an unbroken spoken unit, it fits the rule to be counted as a single word.

There are many more examples of more complex exceptions than this, especially when you start considering non-European languages. However, we need not trouble ourselves with that here in order to start thinking about ‘words’ in the context of grammar.

What makes up a word?

Words are made up of morphemes. Luckily, a morpheme is easier to define than a word, as this is the smallest possible linguistic unit that carries meaning.

For example, the word ‘kind,’ which might describe how a person behaves, is made up of one morpheme. However, ‘kindness,’ the act of being kind, is made up of two morphemes, ‘kind’ and ‘-ness.’ We could have added ‘un-‘ instead, to give us ‘unkind.’ Or we could use both ‘un-‘ and ‘-ness’ to give us a word with three morphemes, ‘unkindness.’

Another example might be the word ‘cat,’ a single morpheme, versus the word ‘cats,’ which is made up of ‘cat’ + ‘-s,’ giving us two morphemes, one which conveys the meaning (cat) and one which makes it a plural.

Standalone morphemes that can also be words in their own right and that carry their own independent meaning are called base morphemes. They are also free morphemes. Other words such as ‘this’ and ‘that,’ or ‘he’ and ‘she’ are also free morphemes but, rather than being base morphemes, they are functional morphemes – they have a linguistic function.

On the other hand, those that cannot stand alone are called bound morphemes, such as ‘un-,’ ‘-ness,’ or ‘-s.’ These often perform a function, like the ‘-s’ we saw in the ‘cats’ example, which turns a singular word into a plural.

Sometimes, the function of the morpheme may be to change the type of word to give us more variety in our language. For example, while ‘kind’ can be used to describe a person (making it an adjective), such as in the statement “The kind lady,” adding ‘-ness’ turns the adjective into the act itself. We can say “The lady shows kindness, ” and the morpheme has turned an adjective into a noun.

What types of words are there?

We just touched upon nouns and adjectives, which are two of the major types of word, among a handful of others. Major types of word include:

Nouns – A noun is a word that gives a name to something, such as an idea or concept (such as ‘love’), or an object, person or place (such as ‘table,’ as in an object, ‘queen,’ as in a person, or ‘London,’ as in a place).

Pronouns – A pronoun stands in place of a noun in order to avoid repetition. For example, the word ‘it’ in the sentence: “The table is in the kitchen. It is large and made of wood.” Other pronouns include ‘I,’ ‘you,’ ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘we’ and ‘they.’

Adjectives – An adjective is a describing word. It gives more information about a noun, such as ‘black’ in “a black cat, ” or ‘large’ in “a large table.”

Verbs – Verbs convey a state or an action. For example: ‘to be,’ as in a state; or ‘to run,’ ‘to sing,’ ‘to play,’ as in actions.

Adverbs – Adverbs give you more information about how an action (a verb) is done. For example, ‘slowly’ in the phrase, “to run slowly.” They can also tell you more about an adjective, another adverb, or about how an entire sentence is performed.

Prepositions – Prepositions tell you the location of one object in relation to another. Words such as ‘on,’ ‘at,’ ‘by,’ ‘with’ and ‘to’ are all examples of prepositions.

Conjunctions – Conjunctions are words that bind ideas together, such as ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘but,’ ‘although.’

All of the above examples are collectively known as parts of speech. We use parts of speech to make sense, or, in other words, to build sentences.

What are compound words?

Compound words are when two words have come together to form a new separate meaning. For example, ‘air’ refers to the atmosphere around us, while a ‘port’ can be any location of embarkation and disembarkation. Bring them together, and we have ‘airport’ – a closed compound word. Similarly, ‘can-opener’ has been coined as the word for a device to open tinned foods. This is a hyphenated compound word. Lastly, ‘ice cream’ is an example of an open compound word.

Vocabulary and Grammar

The collection of agreed words and compound words come together to form the vocabulary of a language – so vocabulary specifically refers to the list of what those words are. Meanwhile, what you do to those words to make them make sense, that’s grammar.