cranberry morpheme

From the cran- of cranberry as an archetype. Cran- is from Low German Kraan (“crane”), but is now a bound morpheme, hence an example of a cranberry morpheme.

cranberry morpheme (plural cranberry morphemes)

1. (linguistic morphology) A bound morpheme within a complex word that is a fossil and whose meaning is opaque to the present speakers of the language.

• The term may refer narrowly to morphemes which occur in a single word, or more broadly to fossilized morphemes generally.

• cranberry word