Clitic

//ˈklɪtɪk// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A morpheme that functions like a word, but never appears as an independent word, instead being always attached to a following or preceding word (or, in some cases, within a surrounding word).

    "In fact, even within the northern Italian dialects, subject clitics do not constitute a syntactically uniform class, as has been convincingly argued in Poletto's work."

  2. 2
    a word that is treated in pronunciation as forming a part of a neighboring word and that is often unaccented or contracted. wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
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Example

More examples

"In fact, even within the northern Italian dialects, subject clitics do not constitute a syntactically uniform class, as has been convincingly argued in Poletto's work."

Etymology

From Ancient Greek κλιτικός (klitikós, “inflexional”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.