Definition of the term word

Although
the borderline between various linguistic units is not always sharp
and clear, we shall try to define every new term on its first
appearance at once simply and unambiguously, if not always very
rigorously. The approximate definition of the term word
has already been given in the opening page of the book.

The
important point to remember about
definitions
is that they should indicate the most essential characteristic
features of the notion expressed by the term under discussion, the
features by which this notion is distinguished from other similar
notions. For instance, in defining the word one must distinguish it
from other linguistic units, such as the phoneme, the morpheme, or
the word-group. In contrast with a definition, a description
aims at enumerating all the essential features of a notion.

To
make things easier we shall begin by a preliminary description,
illustrating it with some examples.

The
word
may be described as the basic unit of language. Uniting meaning and
form, it is composed of one or more morphemes, each consisting of one
or more spoken sounds or their written representation. Morphemes as
we have already said are also meaningful units but they cannot be
used independently, they are always parts of words whereas words can
be used as a complete utterance (e. g. Listen!).
The
combinations of morphemes within words are subject to certain linking
conditions. When a derivational affix is added a new word is formed,
thus, listen
and
listener
are
different words. In fulfilling different grammatical functions words
may take functional affixes: listen
and
listened
are
different forms of the same word. Different forms of the same word
can be also built analytically with the help of auxiliaries. E.g.:
The
world should listen then as I am listening now (Shelley).

When
used in sentences together with other words they are syntactically
organised. Their freedom of entering into syntactic constructions is
limited by many factors, rules and constraints (e. g.: They
told me this story but
not *They
spoke me this story).

The
definition of every basic notion is a very hard task: the definition
of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics because the

27

simplest
word has many different aspects. It has a sound form because it is a
certain arrangement of phonemes; it has its morphological structure,
being also a certain arrangement of morphemes; when used in actual
speech, it may occur in different word forms, different syntactic
functions and signal various meanings. Being the central element of
any language system, the word is a sort of focus for the problems of
phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology and also for some other
sciences that have to deal with language and speech, such as
philosophy and psychology, and probably quite a few other branches of
knowledge. All attempts to characterise the word are necessarily
specific for each domain of science and are therefore considered
one-sided by the representatives of all the other domains and
criticised for incompleteness. The variants of definitions were so
numerous that some authors (A. Rossetti, D.N. Shmelev) collecting
them produced works of impressive scope and bulk.

A
few examples will suffice to show that any definition is conditioned
by the aims and interests of its author.

Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679),
one
of the great English philosophers, revealed a materialistic approach
to the problem of nomination when he wrote that words are not mere
sounds but names of matter. Three centuries later the great Russian
physiologist I.P. Pavlov (1849-1936)
examined
the word in connection with his studies of the second signal system,
and defined it as a universal signal that can substitute any other
signal from the environment in evoking a response in a human
organism. One of the latest developments of science and engineering
is machine translation. It also deals with words and requires a
rigorous definition for them. It runs as follows: a word is a
sequence of graphemes which can occur between spaces, or the
representation of such a sequence on morphemic level.

Within
the scope of linguistics the word has been defined syntactically,
semantically, phonologically and by combining various approaches.

It
has been syntactically defined for instance as “the minimum
sentence” by H. Sweet and much later by L. Bloomfield as “a
minimum free form”. This last definition, although structural in
orientation, may be said to be, to a certain degree, equivalent to
Sweet’s, as practically it amounts to the same thing: free forms
are later defined as “forms which occur as sentences”.

E.
Sapir takes into consideration the syntactic and semantic aspects
when he calls the word “one of the smallest completely satisfying
bits of isolated ‘meaning’, into which the sentence resolves
itself”. Sapir also points out one more, very important
characteristic of the word, its indivisibility:
“It cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning, one or two
other or both of the several parts remaining as a helpless waif on
our hands”. The essence of indivisibility will be clear from a
comparison of the article a
and
the prefix a-
in
a
lion and
alive.
A lion is
a word-group because we can separate its elements and insert other
words between them: a
living lion, a dead lion. Alive is
a word: it is indivisible, i.e. structurally impermeable: nothing can
be inserted between its elements. The morpheme a-
is
not free, is not a word. The

28

situation
becomes more complicated if we cannot be guided by solid spelling.’
“The Oxford English Dictionary», for instance, does not
include the
reciprocal pronouns each
other and
one
another under
separate headings, although
they should certainly be analysed as word-units, not as word-groups
since they have become indivisible: we now say with
each other and
with
one another instead
of the older forms one
with another or
each
with the other.¹

Altogether
is
one word according to its spelling, but how is one to treat all
right, which
is rather a similar combination?

When
discussing the internal cohesion of the word the English linguist
John Lyons points out that it should be discussed in terms of two
criteria “positional
mobility”
and
“un­interrupt­abili­ty”.
To illustrate the first he segments into morphemes the following
sentence:

the
—
boy
—
s
—
walk
—
ed
—
slow
—
ly
—
up
—
the
—
hill

The
sentence may be regarded as a sequence of ten morphemes, which occur
in a particular order relative to one another. There are several
possible changes in this order which yield an acceptable English
sentence:

slow
—
ly
—
the
—
boy
—
s
—
walk
—
ed
—
up
—
the
—
hill
up —
the
—
hill
—
slow
—
ly
—
walk
—
ed
—
the
—
boy
—
s

Yet
under all the permutations certain groups of morphemes behave as
‘blocks’ —
they
occur always together, and in the same order relative to one another.
There is no possibility of the sequence s
—
the
—
boy,
ly —
slow,
ed —
walk.
“One
of the characteristics of the word is that it tends to be internally
stable (in terms of the order of the component morphemes), but
positionally mobile (permutable with other words in the same
sentence)”.²

A
purely semantic treatment will be found in Stephen Ullmann’s
explanation: with him connected discourse, if analysed from the
semantic point of view, “will fall into a certain number of
meaningful segments which are ultimately composed of meaningful
units. These meaningful units are called words.»³

The
semantic-phonological approach may be illustrated by A.H.Gardiner’s
definition: “A word is an articulate sound-symbol in its aspect of
denoting something which is spoken about.»⁴

The
eminent French linguist A. Meillet (1866-1936)
combines
the semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria and advances a
formula which underlies many subsequent definitions, both abroad and
in our country, including the one given in the beginning of this
book: “A word is defined by the association of a particular meaning
with a

¹Sapir
E. Language.
An Introduction to the Study of Speech. London, 1921,
P.
35.

² Lyons,
John. Introduction
to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1969.
P. 203.

³ Ullmann
St. The
Principles of Semantics. Glasgow, 1957.
P.
30.

⁴ Gardiner
A.H. The
Definition of the Word and the Sentence //
The
British Journal of Psychology. 1922.
XII.
P. 355
(quoted
from: Ullmann
St.,
Op.
cit., P. 51).

29

particular
group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment.»¹

This
definition does not permit us to distinguish words from phrases
because not only child,
but
a
pretty child as
well are combinations of a particular group of sounds with a
particular meaning capable of a particular grammatical employment.

We
can, nevertheless, accept this formula with some modifications,
adding that a word is the smallest significant unit of a given
language capable of functioning alone and characterised by positional
mobility
within
a sentence, morphological
uninterruptability
and semantic
integrity.²
All these criteria are necessary because they permit us to create a
basis for the oppositions between the word and the phrase, the word
and the phoneme, and the word and the morpheme: their common feature
is that they are all units of the language, their difference lies in
the fact that the phoneme is not significant, and a morpheme cannot
be used as a complete utterance.

Another
reason for this supplement is the widespread scepticism concerning
the subject. It has even become a debatable point whether a word is a
linguistic unit and not an arbitrary segment of speech. This opinion
is put forth by S. Potter, who writes that “unlike a phoneme or a
syllable, a word is not a linguistic unit at all.»³
He calls it a conventional and arbitrary segment of utterance, and
finally adopts the already mentioned
definition of L. Bloomfield. This position is, however, as
we have already mentioned, untenable, and in fact S. Potter himself
makes ample use of the word as a unit in his linguistic analysis.

The
weak point of all the above definitions is that they do not establish
the relationship between language and thought, which is formulated if
we treat the word as a dialectical unity of form and content, in
which the form is the spoken or written expression which calls up a
specific meaning, whereas the content is the meaning rendering the
emotion or the concept in the mind of the speaker which he intends to
convey to his listener.

Summing
up our review of different definitions, we come to the conclusion
that they are bound to be strongly dependent upon the line of
approach, the aim the scholar has in view. For a comprehensive word
theory, therefore, a description seems more appropriate than a
definition.

The
problem of creating a word theory based upon the materialistic
understanding of the relationship between word and thought on the one
hand, and language and society, on the other, has been one of the
most discussed for many years. The efforts of many eminent scholars
such as V.V. Vinogradov, A. I. Smirnitsky, O.S. Akhmanova, M.D.
Stepanova, A.A. Ufimtseva —
to
name but a few, resulted in throwing light

¹Meillet
A. Linguistique
historique et linguistique generate. Paris,
1926.
Vol.
I. P. 30.

² It
might be objected that such words as articles, conjunctions and a few
other words
never occur as sentences, but they are not numerous and could be
collected into a
list of exceptions.

³ See:
Potter
S. Modern
Linguistics. London, 1957.
P.
78.

30

on this problem and achieved a
clear presentation of the word as a basic unit of the language. The
main points may now be summarised.

The
word
is the
fundamental
unit
of language.
It is a dialectical
unity
of form
and
content.
Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it may reflect
human notions, and in this sense may be considered as the form of
their existence. Concepts fixed in the meaning of words are formed as
generalised and approximately correct reflections of reality,
therefore in signifying them words reflect reality in their content.

The
acoustic aspect of the word serves to name objects of reality, not to
reflect them. In this sense the word may be regarded as a sign. This
sign, however, is not arbitrary but motivated by the whole process of
its development. That is to say, when a word first comes into
existence it is built out of the elements already available in the
language and according to the existing patterns.

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This article is about the unit of speech and writing. For the computer software, see Microsoft Word. For other uses, see Word (disambiguation).

A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible.^[1] 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.^[2] Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition.^{[3]: 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. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations.^[4]: 6

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.^[1] Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can also be joined to create other words in a process of morphological derivation.^[2]: 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»). Words with more than one root («[type][writ]er», «[cow][boy]s», «[tele][graph]ically») are called compound words. 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»).

In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a «word» may be learned as part of learning the writing system.^[5] 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 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»).

Definitions and meanings

Since the beginning of the study of linguistics, numerous attempts at defining what a word is have been made, with many different criteria.^[5] However, no satisfying definition has yet been found to apply to all languages and at all levels of linguistic analysis. It is, however, possible to find consistent definitions of «word» at different levels of description.^[4]: 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.^[2]: 1285

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». However, in other languages they may correspond to elements of different size.^[4]: 1 Much of the difficulty stems from the eurocentric bias, as languages from outside of Europe may not follow the intuitions of European scholars. Some of the criteria for «word» developed can only be applicable to languages of broadly European synthetic structure.^[4]: 1-3 Because of this unclear status, some linguists propose avoiding the term «word» altogether, instead focusing on better defined terms such as morphemes.^[6]

Dictionaries categorize a language’s lexicon into individually listed forms called lemmas. These can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a «word» in the opinion of the writers of that language. This written form of a word constitutes a lexeme.^{[2]: 670-671} The most appropriate means of measuring the length of a word is by counting its syllables or morphemes.^[7] When a word has multiple definitions or multiple senses, it may result in confusion in a debate or discussion.^[8]

Phonology

One distinguishable meaning of the term «word» can be defined on phonological grounds. It is a unit larger or equal to a syllable, which can be distinguished based on segmental or prosodic features, or through its interactions with phonological rules. In Walmatjari, an Australian language, roots or suffixes may have only one syllable but a phonologic word must have at least two syllables. A disyllabic verb root may take a zero suffix, e.g. luwa-ø ‘hit!’, but a monosyllabic root must take a suffix, e.g. ya-nta ‘go!’, thus conforming to a segmental pattern of Walmatjari words. In the Pitjantjatjara dialect of the Wati language, another language form Australia, a word-medial syllable can end with a consonant but a word-final syllable must end with a vowel.^[4]: 14

In most languages, stress may serve a criterion for a phonological word. In languages with a fixed stress, it is possible to ascertain word boundaries from its location. Although it is impossible to predict word boundaries from stress alone in languages with phonemic stress, there will be just one syllable with primary stress per word, which allows for determining the total number of words in an utterance.^[4]: 16

Many phonological rules operate only within a phonological word or specifically across word boundaries. In Hungarian, dental consonants /d/, /t/, /l/ or /n/ assimilate to a following semi-vowel /j/, yielding the corresponding palatal sound, but only within one word. Conversely, external sandhi rules act across word boundaries. The prototypical example of this rule comes from Sanskrit; however, initial consonant mutation in contemporary Celtic languages or the linking r phenomenon in some non-rhotic English dialects can also be used to illustrate word boundaries.^[4]: 17

It is often the case that a phonological word does not correspond to our intuitive conception of a word. The Finnish compound word pääkaupunki ‘capital’ is phonologically two words (pää ‘head’ and kaupunki ‘city’) because it does not conform to Finnish patterns of vowel harmony within words. Conversely, a single phonological word may be made up of more than one syntactical elements, such as in the English phrase I’ll come, where I’ll forms one phonological word.^{[3]: 13:618}

Lexemes

A word can be thought of as an item in a speaker’s internal lexicon; this is called a lexeme. Nevertheless, it is considered different from a word used in everyday speech, since it is assumed to also include inflected forms. Therefore, the lexeme teapot refers to the singular teapot as well as the plural, teapots. There is also the question to what extent should inflected or compounded words be included in a lexeme, especially in agglutinative languages. For example, there is little doubt that in Turkish the lexeme for house should include nominative singular ev or plural evler. However, it is not clear if it should also encompass the word evlerinizden ‘from your houses’, formed through regular suffixation. There are also lexemes such as «black and white» or «do-it-yourself», which, although consist of multiple words, still form a single collocation with a set meaning.^{[3]: 13:618}

Grammar

Grammatical words are proposed to consist of a number of grammatical elements which occur together (not in separate places within a clause) in a fixed order and have a set meaning. However, there are exceptions to all of these criteria.^[4]: 19

Single grammatical words have a fixed internal structure; when the structure is changed, the meaning of the word also changes. In Dyirbal, which can use many derivational affixes with its nouns, there are the dual suffix -jarran and the suffix -gabun meaning «another». With the noun yibi they can be arranged into yibi-jarran-gabun («another two women») or yibi-gabun-jarran («two other women») but changing the suffix order also changes their meaning. Speakers of a language also usually associate a specific meaning with a word and not a single morpheme. For example, when asked to talk about untruthfulness they rarely focus on the meaning of morphemes such as -th or -ness.^[4]: 19-20

Semantics

Leonard Bloomfield introduced the concept of «Minimal Free Forms» in 1928. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves.^[9]: 11 This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense by themselves (for example, the and of).^[10]: 77 Some semanticists have put forward a theory of so-called semantic primitives or semantic primes, indefinable words representing fundamental concepts that are intuitively meaningful. According to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their associated conceptual denotations.^[11][12]

Features

In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax, words (also called lexical items in the literature) are construed as «bundles» of linguistic features that are united into a structure with form and meaning.^{[13]: 36–37} For example, the word «koalas» has semantic features (it denotes real-world objects, koalas), category features (it is a noun), number features (it is plural and must agree with verbs, pronouns, and demonstratives in its domain), phonological features (it is pronounced a certain way), etc.

Orthography

In languages with a literary tradition, the question of what is considered a single word is influenced by orthography. Word separators, typically spaces and punctuation marks are common in modern orthography of languages using alphabetic scripts, but these are a relatively modern development in the history of writing. In character encoding, word segmentation depends on which characters are defined as word dividers. In English orthography, compound expressions may contain spaces. For example, ice cream, air raid shelter and get up each are generally considered to consist of more than one word (as each of the components are free forms, with the possible exception of get), and so is no one, but the similarly compounded someone and nobody are considered single words.

Sometimes, languages which are close grammatically will consider the same order of words in different ways. For example, reflexive verbs in the French infinitive are separate from their respective particle, e.g. se laver («to wash oneself»), whereas in Portuguese they are hyphenated, e.g. lavar-se, and in Spanish they are joined, e.g. lavarse.^[a]

Not all languages delimit words expressly. Mandarin Chinese is a highly analytic language with few inflectional affixes, making it unnecessary to delimit words orthographically. However, there are many multiple-morpheme compounds in Mandarin, as well as a variety of bound morphemes that make it difficult to clearly determine what constitutes a word.^[14]: 56 Japanese uses orthographic cues to delimit words, such as switching between kanji (characters borrowed from Chinese writing) and the two kana syllabaries. This is a fairly soft rule, because content words can also be written in hiragana for effect, though if done extensively spaces are typically added to maintain legibility. Vietnamese orthography, although using the Latin alphabet, delimits monosyllabic morphemes rather than words.

Word boundaries

The task of defining what constitutes a «word» involves determining where one word ends and another word begins, that is identifying word boundaries. There are several ways to determine where the word boundaries of spoken language should be placed:^[5]

• Potential pause: A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries. However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words, or fail to separate two or more closely linked words (e.g. «to a» in «He went to a house»).
• Indivisibility: A speaker is told to say a sentence out loud, and then is told to say the sentence again with extra words added to it. Thus, I have lived in this village for ten years might become My family and I have lived in this little village for about ten or so years. These extra words will tend to be added in the word boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have infixes, which are put inside a word. Similarly, some have separable affixes: in the German sentence «Ich komme gut zu Hause an«, the verb ankommen is separated.
• Phonetic boundaries: Some languages have particular rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be. For example, in a language that regularly stresses the last syllable of a word, a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable. Another example can be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like Turkish):^[15]: 9 the vowels within a given word share the same quality, so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. Nevertheless, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions.
• Orthographic boundaries: Word separators, such as spaces and punctuation marks can be used to distinguish single words. However, this depends on a specific language. East-asian writing systems often do not separate their characters. This is the case with Chinese, Japanese writing, which use logographic characters, as well as Thai and Lao, which are abugidas.

Morphology

Morphology is the study of word formation and structure. Words may undergo different morphological processes which are traditionally classified into two broad groups: derivation and inflection. Derivation is a process in which a new word is created from existing ones, often with a change of meaning. For example, in English the verb to convert may be modified into the noun a convert through stress shift and into the adjective convertible through affixation. Inflection adds grammatical information to a word, such as indicating case, tense, or gender.^[14]: 73

In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, love) may inflect to have a number of different forms (for example, loves, loving, and loved). However, for some purposes these are not usually considered to be different words, but rather different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes.

In Indo-European languages in particular, the morphemes distinguished are:

• The root.
• Optional suffixes.
• A inflectional suffix.

Thus, the Proto-Indo-European *wr̥dhom would be analyzed as consisting of

1. *wr̥-, the zero grade of the root *wer-.
2. A root-extension *-dh- (diachronically a suffix), resulting in a complex root *wr̥dh-.
3. The thematic suffix *-o-.
4. The neuter gender nominative or accusative singular suffix *-m.

Philosophy

Philosophers have found words to be objects of fascination since at least the 5th century BC, with the foundation of the philosophy of language. Plato analyzed words in terms of their origins and the sounds making them up, concluding that there was some connection between sound and meaning, though words change a great deal over time. John Locke wrote that the use of words «is to be sensible marks of ideas», though they are chosen «not by any natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of such an idea».^[16] Wittgenstein’s thought transitioned from a word as representation of meaning to «the meaning of a word is its use in the language.»^[17]

Classes

Each word belongs to a category, based on shared grammatical properties. Typically, a language’s lexicon may be classified into several such groups of words. The total number of categories as well as their types are not universal and vary among languages. For example, English has a group of words called articles, such as the (the definite article) or a (the indefinite article), which mark definiteness or identifiability. This class is not present in Japanese, which depends on context to indicate this difference. On the other hand, Japanese has a class of words called particles which are used to mark noun phrases according to their grammatical function or thematic relation, which English marks using word order or prosody.^{[18]: 21–24}

It is not clear if any categories other than interjection are universal parts of human language. The basic bipartite division that is ubiquitous in natural languages is that of nouns vs verbs. However, in some Wakashan and Salish languages, all content words may be understood as verbal in nature. In Lushootseed, a Salish language, all words with ‘noun-like’ meanings can be used predicatively, where they function like verb. For example, the word sbiaw can be understood as ‘(is a) coyote’ rather than simply ‘coyote’.^{[19][3]: 13:631} On the other hand, in Eskimo–Aleut languages all content words can be analyzed as nominal, with agentive nouns serving the role closest to verbs. Finally, in some Austronesian languages it is not clear whether the distinction is applicable and all words can be best described as interjections which can perform the roles of other categories.^{[3]: 13:631}

The current classification of words into classes is based on the work of Dionysius Thrax, who, in the 1st century BC, distinguished eight categories of Ancient Greek words: noun, verb, participle, article, pronoun, preposition, adverb, and conjunction. Later Latin authors, Apollonius Dyscolus and Priscian, applied his framework to their own language; since Latin has no articles, they replaced this class with interjection. Adjectives (‘happy’), quantifiers (‘few’), and numerals (‘eleven’) were not made separate in those classifications due to their morphological similarity to nouns in Latin and Ancient Greek. They were recognized as distinct categories only when scholars started studying later European languages.^{[3]: 13:629}

In Indian grammatical tradition, Pāṇini introduced a similar fundamental classification into a nominal (nāma, suP) and a verbal (ākhyāta, tiN) class, based on the set of suffixes taken by the word. Some words can be controversial, such as slang in formal contexts; misnomers, due to them not meaning what they would imply; or polysemous words, due to the potential confusion between their various senses.^[20]

History

In ancient Greek and Roman grammatical tradition, the word was the basic unit of analysis. Different grammatical forms of a given lexeme were studied; however, there was no attempt to decompose them into morphemes. ^[21]: 70 This may have been the result of the synthetic nature of these languages, where the internal structure of words may be harder to decode than in analytic languages. There was also no concept of different kinds of words, such as grammatical or phonological – the word was considered a unitary construct.^[4]: 269 The word (dictiō) was defined as the minimal unit of an utterance (ōrātiō), the expression of a complete thought.^[21]: 70

See also

• Longest words
• Utterance
• Word (computer architecture)
• Word count, the number of words in a document or passage of text
• Wording
• Etymology

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Barton, David (1994). Literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. p. 96. ISBN 0-631-19089-9. OCLC 28722223.
• The encyclopedia of language & linguistics. E. K. Brown, Anne Anderson (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier. 2006. ISBN 978-0-08-044854-1. OCLC 771916896.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
• Crystal, David (1995). The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-40179-8. OCLC 31518847.
• Plag, Ingo (2003). Word-formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-511-07843-9. OCLC 57545191.
• The Oxford English Dictionary. J. A. Simpson, E. S. C. Weiner, Oxford University Press (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989. ISBN 0-19-861186-2. OCLC 17648714.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

Princeton’s WordNetRate this definition:2.2 / 10 votes

1. wordnoun

   a unit of language that native speakers can identify

   «words are the blocks from which sentences are made»; «he hardly said ten words all morning»

2. wordnoun

   a brief statement

   «he didn’t say a word about it»

3. news, intelligence, tidings, wordnoun

   information about recent and important events

   «they awaited news of the outcome»

4. wordnoun

   a verbal command for action

   «when I give the word, charge!»

5. discussion, give-and-take, wordnoun

   an exchange of views on some topic

   «we had a good discussion»; «we had a word or two about it»

6. parole, word, word of honornoun

   a promise

   «he gave his word»

7. wordnoun

   a word is a string of bits stored in computer memory

   «large computers use words up to 64 bits long»

8. Son, Word, Logosnoun

   the divine word of God; the second person in the Trinity (incarnate in Jesus)

9. password, watchword, word, parole, countersignnoun

   a secret word or phrase known only to a restricted group

   «he forgot the password»

10. Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Wordverb

    the sacred writings of the Christian religions

    «he went to carry the Word to the heathen»

11. give voice, formulate, word, phrase, articulateverb

    put into words or an expression

    «He formulated his concerns to the board of trustees»

WiktionaryRate this definition:5.0 / 1 vote

1. wordnoun

   The fact or action of speaking, as opposed to writing or to action.

2. wordnoun

   Something which has been said; a comment, utterance; speech.

3. wordnoun

   A distinct unit of language (sounds in speech or written letters) with a particular meaning, composed of one or more morphemes, and also of one or more phonemes that determine its sound pattern.

4. wordnoun

   A distinct unit of language which is approved by some authority.

5. wordnoun

   News; tidings.

   Have you had any word from John yet?

6. wordnoun

   An order; a request or instruction.

   He sent word that we should strike camp before winter.

7. wordnoun

   A promise; an oath or guarantee.

   I give you my word that I will be there on time.

8. wordnoun

   Christ.

9. wordnoun

   Communication from god; the message of the Christian gospel; the Bible.

   Her parents had lived in Botswana, spreading the word among the tribespeople.

10. wordverb

    To say or write (something) using particular words.

    I’m not sure how to word this letter to the council.

11. wordnoun

    A brief discussion or conversation.

    Can I have a word with you?

12. wordnoun

    Angry debate or conversation; argument.

    There had been words between him and the secretary about the outcome of the meeting.

13. wordnoun

    Any sequence of letters or characters considered as a discrete entity.

14. wordnoun

    A unit of text equivalent to five characters and one space.

15. wordnoun

    A fixed-size group of bits handled as a unit by a machine. On many 16-bit machines a word is 16 bits or two bytes.

16. wordnoun

    A finite string which is not a command or operator.

17. wordnoun

    A group element, expressed as a product of group elements.

18. wordnoun

    Different symbols, written or spoken, arranged together in a unique sequence that approximates a thought in a person’s mind.

19. wordinterjection

    truth, to tell or speak the truth; the shortened form of the statement, «My word is my bond,» an expression eventually shortened to «Word is bond,» before it finally got cut to just «Word,» which is its most commonly used form.

20. wordinterjection

    An abbreviated form of word up; a statement of the acknowledgment of fact with a hint of nonchalant approval.

21. Wordnoun

    Scripture; The Bible

22. Wordnoun

    The creative word of God; logos

23. Etymology: From wurdan, from werdʰo-, from wer-; cognate with Old Frisian, Old Saxon (Dutch woord), Old High German wort (German Wort), Old Norse orð (Icelandic orð, Swedish ord), Gothic. The Proto-Indo-European root is also the source of Latin verbum, Lithuanian vardas, and, more distantly, of Ancient Greek and Old Slavonic (Russian).

Samuel Johnson’s DictionaryRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. WORDnoun

   Etymology: word , Saxon; woord, Dutch.

   1. A single part of speech.

   If you speak three words, it will three times report you the three words.
   Francis Bacon.

   As conceptions are the images of things to the mind within itself, so are words or names the marks of those conceptions to the minds of them we converse with.
   Robert South, Sermons.

   Amongst men who confound their ideas with words, there must be endless disputes, wrangling, and jargon.
   John Locke.

   Each wight who reads not, and but scans and spells,
   Each word catcher that lives on syllables.
   Alexander Pope.

   2. A short discourse.

   Shall I vouchsafe your worship a word or two?
   —— Two thousand, and I’ll vouchsafe thee the hearing.
   William Shakespeare.

   A word, Lucilius,
   How he receiv’d you.
   William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar.

   A friend who shall own thee in thy lowest condition, answer all thy wants, and, in a word, never leave thee.
   South.

   In a word, the Gospel describes God to us in all respects such a one as we would wish him to be.
   John Tillotson.

   3. Talk; discourse.

   Why should calamity be full of words?
   —— Windy attorneys to their client woes!
   Let them have scope, though what they do impart
   Help nothing else, yet they do ease the heart.
   William Shakespeare, R. III.

   If you dislike the play,
   Pray make no words on’t ’till the second day,
   Or third be past; for we would have you know it,
   The loss will fall on us, not on the poet.
   John Denham.

   Cease this contention: be thy words severe,
   Sharp as he merits; but the sword forbear.
   Dryden.

   If words are sometimes to be used, they ought to be grave, kind, and sober, representing the ill, or unbecomingness of the faults.
   John Locke.

   If I appear a little word-bound in my first solutions, I hope it will be imputed to the long disuse of speech.
   Spectator.

   4. Dispute; verbal contention.

   In argument upon a case,
   Some words there grew ’twixt Somerset and me.
   William Shakespeare.

   5. Language.

   Found you no displeasure by word or countenance?
   William Shakespeare.

   I’ll write thee a challenge, or I’ll deliver thy indignation to him by word of mouth.
   William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night.

   He commanded the men to be ranged in battalions, and rid to every squadron, giving them such words as were proper to the occasion.
   Edward Hyde.

   An easy way, by word of mouth communicated to me.
   Boyle.

   6. Promise.

   Obey thy parents, keep thy word justly, swear not.
   William Shakespeare.

   I take your princely word for these redresses.
   —— I give it you, and will maintain my word.
   William Shakespeare, H. IV.

   The duke shall wield his conqu’ring sword,
   The king shall pass his honest word.
   Dryden.

   7. Signal; token.

   Every soldier, kill his prisoners;
   Give the word through.
   William Shakespeare, Henry V.

   8. Account; tydings; message.

   Bring me word thither
   How the world goes, that to the pace of it
   I may spur on my journey.
   William Shakespeare, Coriolanus.

   Why should she write to Edmund? Might not you
   Transport her purposes by word?
   William Shakespeare, King Lear.

   Two optick nerves she ties,
   Like spectacles across the eyes;
   By which the spirits bring her word,
   Whene’er the balls are fix’d or stirr’d.
   Matthew Prior.

   9. Declaration.

   I know you brave, and take you at your word;
   That present service which you vaunt, afford.
   Dryden.

   10. Affirmation.

   Every person has enough to do to work out his own salvation; which, if we will take the apostle’s word, is to be done with fear and trembling.
   Decay of Piety.

   I desire not the reader should take my word, and therefore I will set two of their discourses in the same light for every man to judge.
   Dryden.

   11. Scripture; word of God.

   They say this church of England neither hath the word purely preached, nor the sacraments sincerely ministred.
   John Whitgift.

   12. The second person of the ever adorable Trinity. A scripture term.

   Thou my Word, begotten son, by thee
   This I perform.
   John Milton.

2. To Wordverb

   To express in proper words.

   Let us blacken him what we can, said Harrison of the blessed king, upon the wording and drawing up his charge against approaching trial.
   Robert South, Sermons.

   Whether I have improved these fables or no, in the wording or meaning of them, the book must stand or fall to itself.
   Roger L’Estrange.

   The apology for the king is the same, but worded with greater deference to that great prince.
   Addison.

3. To Wordverb

   To dispute.

   Etymology: from the noun.

   He that descends not to word it with a shrew, does worse than beat her.
   Roger L’Estrange.

WikipediaRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. Word

   In linguistics, a word of a spoken language can be defined as the smallest sequence of phonemes that can be uttered in isolation with objective or practical meaning. For many languages, words also correspond to sequences of graphemes («letters») in their standard writing systems that are delimited by spaces wider than the normal inter-letter space, or by other graphical conventions. The concept of «word» is usually distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of speech which has a meaning, even if it will not stand on its own.
   In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a «word» may be mostly learned as part of learning the writing system. This is the case of the English language, and of most languages that are written with alphabets derived from the ancient Latin or Greek alphabets.
   There is still no consensus among linguists about the proper definition of «word» in a spoken language that is independent of its writing system, nor about the precise distinction between it and «morpheme». This issue is particularly debated for Chinese and other languages of East Asia, and may be moot for Afro-Asiatic languages.
   InEnglish orthography, the letter sequences «rock», «god», «write», «with», «the», «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»).
   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»). Words with more than one root («[type][writ]er», «[cow][boy]s», «[tele][graph]ically») are called compound.
   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»).

Webster DictionaryRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. Wordnoun

   the spoken sign of a conception or an idea; an articulate or vocal sound, or a combination of articulate and vocal sounds, uttered by the human voice, and by custom expressing an idea or ideas; a single component part of human speech or language; a constituent part of a sentence; a term; a vocable

2. Wordnoun

   hence, the written or printed character, or combination of characters, expressing such a term; as, the words on a page

3. Wordnoun

   talk; discourse; speech; language

4. Wordnoun

   account; tidings; message; communication; information; — used only in the singular

5. Wordnoun

   signal; order; command; direction

6. Wordnoun

   language considered as implying the faith or authority of the person who utters it; statement; affirmation; declaration; promise

7. Wordnoun

   verbal contention; dispute

8. Wordnoun

   a brief remark or observation; an expression; a phrase, clause, or short sentence

9. Wordverb

   to use words, as in discussion; to argue; to dispute

10. Wordverb

    to express in words; to phrase

11. Wordverb

    to ply with words; also, to cause to be by the use of a word or words

12. Wordverb

    to flatter with words; to cajole

FreebaseRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. Word

   In language, a word is the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content. This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own. A word may consist of a single morpheme, or several, whereas a morpheme may not be able to stand on its own as a word. A complex word will typically include a root and one or more affixes, or more than one root in a compound. Words can be put together to build larger elements of language, such as phrases, clauses, and sentences.
   The term word may refer to a spoken word or to a written word, or sometimes to the abstract concept behind either. Spoken words are made up of units of sound called phonemes, and written words of symbols called graphemes, such as the letters of the English alphabet.

Chambers 20th Century DictionaryRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. Word

   wurd, n. an oral or written sign expressing an idea or notion: talk, discourse: signal or sign: message: promise: declaration: a pass-word, a watch-word, a war-cry: the Holy Scripture, or a part of it: (pl.) verbal contention.—v.t. to express in words: (Shak.) to flatter.—v.i. to speak, talk.—ns. Word′-blind′ness, loss of ability to read; Word′-book, a book with a collection of words: a vocabulary.—adj. Word′-bound, unable to find expression in words.—n. Word′-build′ing, the formation or composition of words.—adj. Wor′ded, expressed in words.—adv. Wor′dily.—ns. Wor′diness; Wor′ding, act, manner, or style of expressing in words.—adj. Wor′dish (obs.), verbose.—n. Wor′dishness.—adj. Word′less (Shak.), without words, silent.—ns. Word′-mem′ory, the power of recalling words to the mind; Word′-paint′er, one who describes vividly; Word′-paint′ing, the act of describing anything clearly and fully by words only; Word′-pic′ture, a description in words which presents an object to the mind as if in a picture.—adj. Wor′dy, full of words: using or containing many words.—Word for word, literally, verbatim.—Break one’s word, to fail to fulfil a promise; By word of mouth, orally; Good word, favourable mention, praise; Hard words, angry, hot words; Have a word with, to have some conversation with; Have words with, to quarrel, dispute with; In a word, In one word, in short, to sum up; In word, in speech only, in profession only; Pass one’s word, to make a promise; The Word, the Scripture: (theol.) the second person in the Trinity, the Logos. [A.S. word; Goth. waurd, Ice. orth, Ger. wort; also conn. with L. verbum, a word, Gr. eirein, to speak.]

The Foolish Dictionary, by Gideon WurdzRate this definition:1.0 / 1 vote

1. WORD

   Something you must keep after giving it to another.

Dictionary of Nautical TermsRate this definition:5.0 / 1 vote

1. word

   The watch-word; the parole and countersign, which, being issued to
   the authorized persons at guard-mounting, become a test whereby spies or
   strangers are detected.

Rap DictionaryRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. wordnoun

   What? None of this makes sense.

2. wordnoun

   Really?(used in a question) Speaker 1:»Yo I got that.» Speaker 2:»Oh word?»

3. wordnoun

   money (Cuse Town shit)

Editors ContributionRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. word

   A unit of language.

   Words are an important part of language.

   Submitted by MaryC on January 12, 2020  

Surnames Frequency by Census RecordsRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. WORD

   According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Word is ranked #5628 in terms of the most common surnames in America.

   The Word surname appeared 6,177 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 2 would have the surname Word.

   57.9% or 3,579 total occurrences were White.
   37.1% or 2,295 total occurrences were Black.
   2.2% or 139 total occurrences were of two or more races.
   1.9% or 118 total occurrences were of Hispanic origin.
   0.4% or 26 total occurrences were American Indian or Alaskan Native.
   0.3% or 20 total occurrences were Asian.

Matched Categories

1. • Express
   • Hypostasis
   • Information
   • Language Unit
   • Order
   • Positive Identification
   • Promise
   • Secret
   • Speech
   • Statement

British National Corpus

1. Spoken Corpus Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word ‘WORD’ in Spoken Corpus Frequency: #512

2. Written Corpus Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word ‘WORD’ in Written Corpus Frequency: #437

3. Nouns Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word ‘WORD’ in Nouns Frequency: #35

How to pronounce WORD?

How to say WORD in sign language?

Numerology

1. Chaldean Numerology

   The numerical value of WORD in Chaldean Numerology is: 1

2. Pythagorean Numerology

   The numerical value of WORD in Pythagorean Numerology is: 6

Examples of WORD in a Sentence

1. Mary Travis:

   It’s little things that mean so much when you’re recovering from a stroke, we never know when the end point is but we’re happy with every little change, every little sound, every little word, every new task.

2. Arturo Casadevall:

   This is really important because these people can be treated, and they could have better outcomes with this material if we can just get the word out.

3. Dr. Felice Leonardo Buscaglia:

   Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

4. Johann Most:

   When state and government have gone, laws must go. People who speak of “laws” in a communistic society, think perhaps only of those general rules of sensible and noble conduct which every good man finds it easy to observe. But in that case they use a wrong word. A law is a rule connected with an apparatus to compel obedience. Behind the law stand the court, the sheriff, the police, the hangman, etc., and who wants them? None, we guess.

5. Asmi Fathelbab:

   She told me I’d never work in NYC ever again for as long as she lived, she’s kept her word. She had me fired from other jobs when she found out where I worked. She has kept me from obtaining any sort of steady employment for almost a decade.

Popularity rank by frequency of use

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Translations for WORD

From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary

• ажәаAbkhaz
• woord, erewoordAfrikaans
• ቃልAmharic
• parolaAragonese
• كَلِمةArabic
• শব্দAssamese
• рагӏул, рагӏиAvaric
• kəlmə, sözcük, sözAzerbaijani
• һүҙBashkir
• сло́ваBelarusian
• сло́во, ду́маBulgarian
• শব্দBengali
• ཚིགTibetan Standard
• ger, gerioùBreton
• redactar, paraula, motCatalan, Valencian
• дошChechen
• slovo boží, slovo, slibCzech
• слово, ⱄⰾⱁⰲⱁOld Church Slavonic, Church Slavonic, Old Bulgarian
• сӑмахChuvash
• gairWelsh
• ordDanish
• Wort, EhrenwortGerman
• ލަފުޒުDivehi
• λέξη, συντάσσω, λόγος, διατυπώνωGreek
• vortoEsperanto
• redactar, palabra, vocabloSpanish
• sõnaEstonian
• berba, hitzBasque
• واژه, قول, گفتار, پیمان, کلمهPersian
• Sana, uutiset, sanaaFinnish
• orðFaroese
• verbe, parole, motFrench
• wurdWestern Frisian
• focalIrish
• facal, briatharScottish Gaelic
• palabra, vocábuloGalician
• kalmaHausa
• מִלָּה, ניסחHebrew
• बात, शब्दHindi
• mo, pawòlHaitian Creole
• szóHungarian
• բան, խոսք, խոստում, բառArmenian
• parola, verbo, vocabuloInterlingua
• firman, kataIndonesian
• vortoIdo
• orða, orðIcelandic
• parola, verbo, termine, word, vocaboloItalian
• 福音, 言語, 言葉, 単語, 言質Japanese
• ukara, sabdaJavanese
• სიტყვაGeorgian
• сөзKazakh
• oqaaseqKalaallisut, Greenlandic
• ពាក្យសំដី, ពាក្យKhmer
• ಶಬ್ದ, ಪದKannada
• 말씀, 단어, 말, 낱말Korean
• peyv, kelîme, bêjeKurdish
• сөзKyrgyz
• vocabulum, verbumLatin
• WuertLuxembourgish, Letzeburgesch
• nkómbóLingala
• ຄໍາLao
• žodisLithuanian
• vārdsLatvian
• matapakinga, kupu, pūrongoMāori
• збор, сло́во, формулира, изразува, божја речMacedonian
• ശബ്ദം, പദം, വാക്ക്Malayalam
• үгMongolian
• शब्दMarathi
• perkataan, perbincangan, kabar, berita, janji, khabar, kalimah, firman, sabda, kataMalay
• kelmaMaltese
• စကားလုံးBurmese
• dorerNauru
• शब्दNepali
• woord, formuleren, verwoorden, woordenwisseling, erewoord, onder woorden brengenDutch
• ord, krangel, lovnadNorwegian
• saadNavajo, Navaho
• дзырд, ныхасOssetian, Ossetic
• ਸ਼ਬਦPanjabi, Punjabi
• słowo, słowo bożePolish
• لغت, کلمهPashto, Pushto
• verbo, palavra, promessa, palavra divina, palavra de Deus, palavra do Senhor, notícias, vocábuloPortuguese
• pled, plaidRomansh
• vorbă, [[cuvânt]] [[de]] [[onoare]], cuvântRomanian
• сло́во, слово, перебра́нка, формулироватьRussian
• पदम्, शब्दSanskrit
• لفظSindhi
• reč, реч, slovo, riječ, ријеч, словоSerbo-Croatian
• වචනයSinhala, Sinhalese
• slovo božie, slovo, božie slovo, čestné slovoSlovak
• beseda, častna besedaSlovene
• eraySomali
• llaf, fjalë, sharjeAlbanian
• lentsweSouthern Sotho
• ordSwedish
• nenoSwahili
• வார்த்தை, சொல்Tamil
• దేవుడు, మాట, సంకేత పదము, వార్త, పదము, వాణి, చర్చ, పదంTelugu
• калима, КаломTajik
• คำThai
• ቃልTigrinya
• sözTurkmen
• salitaTagalog
• lefokoTswana
• sözcük, kelimeTurkish
• сүзTatar
• parauTahitian
• سۆزUyghur, Uighur
• сло́воUkrainian
• کلمہ, شبد, باتUrdu
• soʻzUzbek
• những lời, chữ, từ, tiếng, nhời, lờiVietnamese
• vödVolapük
• motWalloon
• baatWolof
• igamaXhosa
• וואָרטYiddish
• ó̩ró̩gbólóhùn kanYoruba
• uhlamvu, igama, isithembisoZulu

Get even more translations for WORD »

Translation

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• العربية (Arabic)
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• Русский (Russian)
• ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
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• עברית (Hebrew)
• Gaeilge (Irish)
• Українська (Ukrainian)
• اردو (Urdu)
• Magyar (Hungarian)
• मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
• Indonesia (Indonesian)
• Italiano (Italian)
• தமிழ் (Tamil)
• Türkçe (Turkish)
• తెలుగు (Telugu)
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• Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
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• Polski (Polish)
• Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
• Românește (Romanian)
• Nederlands (Dutch)
• Ελληνικά (Greek)
• Latinum (Latin)
• Svenska (Swedish)
• Dansk (Danish)
• Suomi (Finnish)
• فارسی (Persian)
• ייִדיש (Yiddish)
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types:

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anagram

a word or phrase spelled by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase

anaphor

a word (such as a pronoun) used to avoid repetition; the referent of an anaphor is determined by its antecedent

antonym, opposite, opposite word

a word that expresses a meaning opposed to the meaning of another word, in which case the two words are antonyms of each other

back-formation

a word invented (usually unwittingly by subtracting an affix) on the assumption that a familiar word derives from it

charade

a word acted out in an episode of the game of charades

cognate, cognate word

a word is cognate with another if both derive from the same word in an ancestral language

content word, open-class word

a word to which an independent meaning can be assigned

contraction

a word formed from two or more words by omitting or combining some sounds

deictic, deictic word

a word specifying identity or spatial or temporal location from the perspective of a speaker or hearer in the context in which the communication occurs

derivative

(linguistics) a word that is derived from another word

diminutive

a word that is formed with a suffix (such as -let or -kin) to indicate smallness

dirty word

a word that is considered to be unmentionable

dissyllable, disyllable

a word having two syllables

descriptor, form, signifier, word form

the phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of a word that can be used to describe or identify something

four-letter Anglo-Saxon word, four-letter word

any of several short English words (often having 4 letters) generally regarded as obscene or offensive

closed-class word, function word

a word that is uninflected and serves a grammatical function but has little identifiable meaning

catchword, guide word, guideword

a word printed at the top of the page of a dictionary or other reference book to indicate the first or last item on that page

head, head word

(grammar) the word in a grammatical constituent that plays the same grammatical role as the whole constituent

headword

a word placed at the beginning of a line or paragraph (as in a dictionary entry)

heteronym

two words are heteronyms if they are spelled the same way but differ in pronunciation

holonym, whole name

a word that names the whole of which a given word is a part

homonym

two words are homonyms if they are pronounced or spelled the same way but have different meanings

hypernym, superordinate, superordinate word

a word that is more generic than a given word

hyponym, subordinate, subordinate word

a word that is more specific than a given word

key word

a significant word used in indexing or cataloging

hybrid, loan-blend, loanblend

a word that is composed of parts from different languages (e.g., `monolingual’ has a Greek prefix and a Latin root)

loan, loanword

a word borrowed from another language; e.g. `blitz’ is a German word borrowed into modern English

meronym, part name

a word that names a part of a larger whole

metonym

a word that denotes one thing but refers to a related thing

monosyllabic word, monosyllable

a word or utterance of one syllable

coinage, neologism, neology

a newly invented word or phrase

hapax legomenon, nonce word

a word with a special meaning used for a special occasion

oxytone

word having stress or an acute accent on the last syllable

palindrome

a word or phrase that reads the same backward as forward

primitive

a word serving as the basis for inflected or derived forms

paroxytone

word having stress or acute accent on the next to last syllable

partitive

word (such a `some’ or `less’) that is used to indicate a part as distinct from a whole

polysemant, polysemantic word, polysemous word

a word having more than one meaning

polysyllabic word, polysyllable

a word of more than three syllables

proparoxytone

word having stress or acute accent on the antepenult

quantifier

(grammar) a word that expresses a quantity (as `fifteen’ or `many’)

logical quantifier, quantifier

(logic) a word (such as `some’ or `all’ or `no’) that binds the variables in a logical proposition

reduplication

a word formed by or containing a repeated syllable or speech sound (usually at the beginning of the word)

retronym

a word introduced because an existing term has become inadequate

substantive

any word or group of words functioning as a noun

equivalent word, synonym

two words that can be interchanged in a context are said to be synonymous relative to that context

term

a word or expression used for some particular thing

language, nomenclature, terminology

a system of words used to name things in a particular discipline

trisyllable

a word having three syllables

manner name, troponym

a word that denotes a manner of doing something

spoken word, vocable

a word that is spoken aloud

classifier

a word or morpheme used in some languages in certain contexts (such as counting) to indicate the semantic class to which the counted item belongs

written word

the written form of a word

syncategorem, syncategoreme

a syncategorematic expression; a word that cannot be used alone as a term in a logical proposition

verbal

a noun or adjective that is formed from a verb

contronym

a word that has two contradictory or opposing meanings

blend, portmanteau, portmanteau word

a new word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings

head word, headword

a content word that can be qualified by a modifier

Latinism

a word or phrase borrowed from Latin

antigram

an anagram that means the opposite of the original word or phrase

plural, plural form

the form of a word that is used to denote more than one

singular, singular form

the form of a word that is used to denote a singleton

ghost word

a word form that has entered the language through the perpetuation of an error

base, radical, root, root word, stem, theme

(linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed

etymon, root

a simple form inferred as the common basis from which related words in several languages can be derived by linguistic processes

citation form, entry word, main entry word

the form of a word that heads a lexical entry and is alphabetized in a dictionary

existential operator, existential quantifier

a logical quantifier of a proposition that asserts the existence of at least one thing for which the proposition is true

universal quantifier

a logical quantifier of a proposition that asserts that the proposition is true for all members of a class of things

jawbreaker

a word that is hard to pronounce

sesquipedalia, sesquipedalian

a very long word (a foot and a half long)

direct antonym

antonyms that are commonly associated (e.g., `wet’ and `dry’)

indirect antonym

antonyms whose opposition is mediated (e.g., the antonymy of `wet’ and `parched’ is mediated by the similarity of `parched’ to `dry’)

noun

a content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action

verb

a content word that denotes an action, occurrence, or state of existence

modifier, qualifier

a content word that qualifies the meaning of a noun or verb

determinative, determiner

one of a limited class of noun modifiers that determine the referents of noun phrases

preposition

a function word that combines with a noun or pronoun or noun phrase to form a prepositional phrase that can have an adverbial or adjectival relation to some other word

pronoun

a function word that is used in place of a noun or noun phrase

conjunction, conjunctive, connective, continuative

an uninflected function word that serves to conjoin words or phrases or clauses or sentences

particle

a function word that can be used in English to form phrasal verbs

bigram

a word that is written with two letters in an alphabetic writing system

trigram

a word that is written with three letters in an alphabetic writing system

tetragram

a word that is written with four letters in an alphabetic writing system

referent

something that refers; a term that refers to another term

markup language

a set of symbols and rules for their use when doing a markup of a document

toponomy, toponymy

the nomenclature of regional anatomy

Gallicism

a word or phrase borrowed from French

abbreviation

a shortened form of a word or phrase

acronym

a word formed from the initial letters of the several words in the name

homograph

two words are homographs if they are spelled the same way but differ in meaning (e.g. fair)

homophone

two words are homophones if they are pronounced the same way but differ in meaning or spelling or both (e.g. bare and bear)