Morphemes in “official”
“official” has 2 morphemes: office + -ial.
Spelling changes when the parts join: the boxes show the letters as written; the morphemes themselves are office + -ial.
Each morpheme explained
| Morpheme | Type | Free / bound | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| office (written offic) | free root | free | place of business where professional or clerical duties are performed |
| -ial | derivational suffix | bound | relating to, of the kind of (form of -al) |
How the word is built
office → official
Each step adds one affix to the word before it; the root “office” is where the chain starts.
Morphemes are not syllables
Morphemes are units of meaning; syllables are units of sound. The boundaries often fall in different places, which is why “official” splits one way for a morphology exercise and another for a syllable count.
Break any word into morphemes
Prefixes, roots and suffixes with glosses, free and in your browser.
Open the morphological analyzer →Related words
Segmentation derived from MorphyNet (Batsuren, Bella & Giunchiglia, 2021; CC BY-SA 3.0, built from Wiktionary), with hand-written affix glosses and root meanings from WordNet. Reviewed for classroom use; tell us if you spot an error.