In linguistics, measure words are words (or morphemes) that are used in combination with a numeral to indicate an amount of some noun. They denote a unit or measurement and are used with nouns that are not countable. For instance, in English, mud is a mass noun and thus one cannot say *"three muds", but one can say "three drops of mud", "three pails of mud", etc. In these examples, drops and pails function as measure words.
Informally, the term measure word is also sometimes used to refer to numeral classifiers, which are used with nouns that are countable in some languages. For instance, in English no extra word is needed when saying "three people", but in many East Asian languages a numeral classifier is added, just as a measure word is added for uncountable nouns in English. While many linguists maintain a distinction between measure words and numeral classifiers, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. (For instance, materials for teaching Chinese as a second language generally refer to Chinese classifiers as "measure words".)
Most measure words in English correspond to units of measurement or containers, and are themselves count nouns rather than grammatical particles:
- one litre of water
- three cups of coffee
- four kernels of corn, three ears of corn, two bushels of corn
Famous quotes containing the words measure and/or word:
“I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“I hardly said a word to my wife until I said ‘yes’ to divorce.”
—John Milius, U.S. screenwriter, Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939)