In a message dated 4/16/98 7:31:56 PM, you wrote:

>I would say "a word is the smallest, non-character, unit of meaning in a
>language".  Perhaps its an "atom of meaning"?

That would be a morpheme, no? a grammatical unit that is an arbitrary union of
a sound and a meaning that cannot be further analyzed. Ex: "pre" "im."

A word can be a morpheme, but a morpheme doesn't need to be a word.

"boy"  + "ish" (two morphemes, one of which is a word) = boyish > like a boy

jk