noun🔗ShareA morpheme that functions like a word, but never appears as an independent word, instead being always attached to a following or preceding word (or, in some cases, within a surrounding word)."The contraction "'s" in "John's here" is a clitic because it acts like the word "is" but can't stand alone; it must attach to the noun "John". "grammarlanguagelinguisticswordphoneticsChat with AIVocabulary GamePractice Reading