In
linguistic morphology a cranberry morpheme (also called unique morpheme or fossilized term) is a type of
bound morpheme that cannot be assigned an independent meaning and grammatical function, but nonetheless serves to distinguish one word from another.[1]
cob in
cobweb, from the obsolete word coppe ("spider").
Many elements in English
toponyms, such as "
-ing" ("Reading", "Dorking", "Washington") from an Old English term meaning "the people of..." or "belonging to..." (Note, however, that the "
-ing" at the end of words such as "reading", the verb, is not a cranberry morpheme but rather an affixed morpheme.)
dew in
dewlap, assuming that the particle popularly associated with literal
dew is
folk etymology and not lost.
A
dialectal word can become part of the standard language in a compound, but not in its root form: e.g. blatherskite ("one who talks nonsense"), as
Scots has the word skite ("contemptible person").
A word can become obsolete in its root form but remain current in a compound: e.g. lukewarm from
Middle Englishluke ("tepid").