Morphologize
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To make (something) morphological (structural). transitive, uncommon
"By morphologizing the tribade, anatomy paradoxically moves her closer to home: the erotic excess that was attributed to foreign women now can be found on the Christian bodies of "Lasses" and "young Wenches" who handle themselves as well as each other."
- 2 To become, or cause (e.g. a phonetic feature) to become, (re)interpreted morphologically. ambitransitive
"[…] and, moreover, it is subject to syntagmatic segmental processes which can morphologize the prosodic accent location (vowel lengthening as in the first three examples and rearticulation of the secondary stressed vowel as in the fourth)."
- 3 To decompose into morphemes (as). ambitransitive
"In the word chlekʼwnts 'he broiled it (salmon)' which morphologizes as /č - lekʼʷ - ənts/ 'on - piece - 3.s.sub.3.s.obj.TRANS.-PAST', we have the processual 'pierce' as trajector, […]"
Example
More examples"By morphologizing the tribade, anatomy paradoxically moves her closer to home: the erotic excess that was attributed to foreign women now can be found on the Christian bodies of "Lasses" and "young Wenches" who handle themselves as well as each other."
Etymology
From morpholog(y), morpholog(ical) + -ize.
More for "morphologize"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.