- root
- (linguistic morphology) the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Inflectional stems often derive from roots.
- (philology) a word from which another word or words are derived
- etymon - a word or morpheme from which a later word is derived
- derivative - a word derived from a root
- cognate - words derived from the same root
- diminutive - a shortened form of a name, typically used informally
