combining form

noun

A type of word part; a bound morpheme; used in combination with a word, a different combining form, or an affix to form a new word.

Meanings

nouncombining form (plural combining forms)

plural combining forms

  1. grammarA type of word part; a bound morpheme; used in combination with a word, a different combining form, or an affix to form a new word.

    Common in English, where in some putative compounds, such as autocrat or technocrat, both members would be combining forms.

    2007, P. H. Matthews, “combining form”, in The concise Oxford dictionary of linguistics, 2nd edition, Oxford [u.a.]: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, pages 63–64
  2. computingA character encoded with a sequence of other characters instead of a precomposed character.
    1 more example

    As far as possible this specification uses non-combining characters, however, in the cases tdot, TripleDot and DotDot Unicode only has combining forms of the accents, and so the entity replacement text starts with a space, to avoid the possibility that the expansion of the entity combines with preceding text.

    2014 April 10, “XML Entity Definitions for Characters (2nd Edition)”, in David Carlisle, Patrick Ion, editors, w3.org, World Wide Web Consortium, retrieved 22 Mar 2015

Translations

Finnish yhdyssanamuoto
  • yhdyssanamuotoword form
Greek συνθετικό
  • συνθετικό (synthetikó)word form
Hungarian kötött allomorf/szóelem, kötött összetételi elő- vagy utótag
  • kötött allomorf/szóelemword form
  • kötött összetételi elő- vagy utótagword form
  • összetétel kötött elő- vagy utótagjaword form
  • (szó)összetétel elő- vagy utótagjaként élő alakword form
Polish złożenie
  • złożenieword form
Cite this entry
APA

combining form. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/combining%20form

MLA

“combining form.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/combining%20form. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “combining form,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/combining%20form.

Source: combining form on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.