A morpheme can be either a root word or a meaningful part of a word (i.e. an affix such as a prefix or suffix). An individual morpheme will always be, if not the whole word, then the smallest meaningful part of a word.
Free Morphemes
Free morphemes are always root words, e.g. 'faith'.
Bound Morphemes
Bound morphemes can only exist as meaningful parts of words.
If you think you've found a morpheme, you will have found a single letter or a group of letters that, if it's not a whole word, must be able, by itself, to change the grammatical function or the meaning of its word.
An example is the suffix, '-ful', in the word, 'faithful': the abstract noun 'faith' becomes the adjective, 'faithful'.
The suffix '-ed' is another common morpheme. When added to a verb, this bound morpheme changes the grammatical tense of its word from present to past. This is a change of grammatical function (similarly, the verb 'cook' becomes... 'cooked'.
Another example, the bound morpheme '-s' can be used to form the grammatical plural of many words that function as nouns. Hence, the free morpheme, the root word, 'book' becomes the plural noun 'books'.
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