1. The smallest meaningful units of a language that carry meaning or grammatical function, studied in structural linguistics.
Usage: linguistics; technical; plural of glosseme

Examples

• Linguists analyze glossemes to understand how languages break down into their most basic meaningful components.
• The study of glossemes helps researchers identify the fundamental building blocks of grammar.
• In structural linguistics, glossemes are distinguished from phonemes by their semantic content.
• Different languages may have different inventories of glossemes.
• The theory of glossemes was developed to provide a more precise framework for linguistic analysis.