Morphologically

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. Pertaining to the study of the structure and formation of words
2. Associated with the analysis of the shapes and components that create words in linguistics
3. In a way connected to how words are built and organized from their parts

Etymology: Morphologically is a plain stack of suffixes, and its history is mostly a story of the adjective beneath it. "Morphological" was formed in English from "morphology", the study of form, with the adjective suffix "-ical", which descends through Latin "-icus" and "-alis" and Old French "-ique" and "-al". The adverb is then built by attaching the English suffix "-ly" to that adjective. That suffix comes from Old English "-līce", itself descended from a Germanic word meaning "body" or "form", so the ending "-ly" in this word carries the same root as "like". The adverb is the newest layer of the word. Because "morphological" already described things relating to form, adding "-ly" simply turns it into a description of how something is done, as in analysing words in terms of their smallest meaningful parts. Its meaning therefore stays close to that of the adjective, and the adverb's use is largely in technical writing about linguistics.

Synonyms: structurally, formally

Antonyms: anatomically, functionally