However, in other languages they may correspond to elements of different size. In some languages, these different types of words coincide and one can analyze, for example, a 'phonological word' as essentially the same as 'grammatical word'. : 6 These include definitions on the phonetic and phonological level, that it is the smallest segment of sound that can be theoretically isolated by word accent and boundary markers on the orthographic level as a segment indicated by blank spaces in writing or print on the basis of morphology as the basic element of grammatical paradigms like inflection, different from word-forms within semantics as the smallest and relatively independent carrier of meaning in a lexicon and syntactically, as the smallest permutable and substitutable unit of a sentence. It is, however, possible to find consistent definitions of 'word' at different levels of description. However, no satisfying definition has yet been found to apply to all languages and at all levels of linguistic analysis.

Since the beginning of the study of linguistics, numerous attempts at defining what a word is have been made, with many different criteria. In English orthography, the letter sequences 'rock', 'god', 'write', 'with', 'the', and 'not' are considered to be single-morpheme words, whereas 'rocks', 'ungodliness', 'typewriter', and 'cannot' are words composed of two or more morphemes ('rock'+'s', 'un'+'god'+'li'+'ness', 'type'+'writ'+'er', and 'can'+'not'). This is the case for the English language, and for most languages that are written with alphabets derived from the ancient Latin or Greek alphabets. In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a 'word' may be learned as part of learning the writing system. In turn, words are combined to form other elements of language, such as phrases ('a red rock', 'put up with'), clauses ('I threw a rock'), and sentences ('I threw a rock, but missed'). Words with more than one root ('er', 's', 'ically') are called compound words. : 768 In English and many other languages, the morphemes that make up a word generally include at least one root (such as 'rock', 'god', 'type', 'writ', 'can', 'not') and possibly some affixes ('-s', 'un-', '-ly', '-ness'). Morphemes can also be joined to create other words in a process of morphological derivation.

Words are made out of at least one morpheme. The concept of 'word' is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations. : 13:618 Some specific definitions of the term 'word' are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context these do not converge on a single definition. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible.

Simple word vs word linguistics