Noun

(wikipedia morphology)

(uncountable) A scientific study of form and structure, usually without regard to function. Especially:

# (linguistics) The study of the internal structure of morphemes (words and their semantic building blocks).

#* {{quote-web

, year = 2001 , author = Yehuda Falk , title = Lexical-Functional Grammar , site = CSLI Publications , url = http://www.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/pdf/1575863405.pdf , accessdate = 2014-02-25 }}

There are many ways to show that word structure is different from phrase and sentence structure. We will mention two here. First, free constituent order in syntax is common cross-linguistically; many languages lack fixed order of the kind that one finds in English. In morphology', on the other hand, order is always fixed. There is no such thing as free morpheme order. Even languages with wildly free word order, such as the Pama-Nyungan (Australian) language Warlpiri (Simpson 1991), have a fixed order of morphemes within the word. Second, syntactic and morphological patterns can differ within the same language. For example, note the difference in English in the positioning of head and complement between syntax and ' morphology .

# (biology) The study of the form and structure of animals and plants.

# (geology) The study of the structure of rocks and landforms.

(countable) The form and structure of something.

(countable) A description of the form and structure of something.

Noun

(en noun)

Model, example.

# Something from which a copy is made; a model or outline.

#* 1923 , ‘President Wilson’, Time , 18 Jun 1923:

There is no reason why all colleges and universities should be cut to the same pattern .

# Someone or something seen as an example to be imitated; an exemplar.

#* 1946 , Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy , I.16:

The Platonic Socrates was a pattern to subsequent philosophers for many ages.

#

#

# A representative example.

# (US) The material needed to make a piece of clothing.

# (textiles) The paper or cardboard template from which the parts of a garment are traced onto fabric prior to cutting out and assembling.

# (metalworking, dated) A full-sized model around which a mould of sand is made, to receive the melted metal. It is usually made of wood and in several parts, so as to be removed from the mould without damage.

# (computing) A text string containing wildcards, used for matching.

There were no files matching the pattern *.txt.

Decorative arrangement.

# A design, motif or decoration, especially formed from regular repeated elements.

#* 2003 , Valentino, ‘Is there a future in fashion's past?’, Time , 5 Feb 2003:

On my way to work the other day, I stopped at a church in Rome and saw a painting of the Madonna. The subtle pattern of blues and golds in the embroidery of her dress was so amazing that I used it to design a new evening dress for my haute couture.

# A naturally-occurring or random arrangement of shapes, colours etc. which have a regular or decorative effect.

#* 2011 , Rachel Cooke, The Observer , 19 Jun 2011:

He lifted the entire joint or fowl up into the air, speared on a carving fork, and sliced pieces off it so that they fell on the plate below in perfectly organised patterns .

# The given spread, range etc. of shot fired from a gun.

# A particular sequence of events, facts etc. which can be understood, used to predict the future, or seen to have a mathematical, geometric, statistical etc. relationship.

#* 1980 , ‘Shifting Targets’, Time , 6 Oct 1980:

The three killings pointed to an ugly new shift in the enduring pattern of violence in Northern Ireland: the mostly Protestant Ulster police, or those suspected of affiliation with them, have become more prominent targets for the I.R.A. than the British troops.

#* 2003 , Kate Hudson, The Guardian , 14 Aug 2003:

Look again at how the US and its allies behaved then, and the pattern is unmistakable.

# (linguistics) An intelligible arrangement in a given area of language.