Word and phrase meaning

Basic Terms and Terminology Relating to Interpreting the Meaning of Words and Phrases Using Context

• Slang and jargon: Slang and jargon are words that have a special meaning to those included in a particular group and without any meaning to those not included in that particular group.
• Colloquialisms; informal words and phrases that are conversational, everyday words and phrases that are acceptable in informal writing and speech, but not acceptable in terms of formal writing and speech.
• Idioms: A collection or a group of words that has become somewhat acceptable in the English language because of their ongoing and consistent use, despite the fact that the group of words does not have a literal meaning. Idioms have figurative meanings, therefore, the meaning of an idiom cannot be inferred or deduced in the same manner that words and phrases with literal meanings do.
• Literal meaning of words: The meaning of a phrase, clause or sentence that can be logically inferred and deduced from the true dictionary accurate definitions of the words in a phrase, clause or sentence. The literal meaning of words is the opposite of the figurative meaning of words.
• Figurative meaning of words: The meaning of a phrase, clause or sentence that cannot be logically inferred and deduced from the true dictionary accurate definitions of the words in a phrase, clause or sentence. The figurative meaning of words is the opposite of the literal meaning of words.
• The root of a word: Also referred to as the base of a word and the stem of a word, is the main part of a word without any syllables before the root of the word, which is a prefix, or after the root of the word, which is a suffix.
• Prefixes: The part of a word that is connected to and before the stem or root of a word
• Suffixes: The part of a word that is connected to and after the stem of the word. Some suffixes, like «s», «es», «d» and «ed» which make words plural or of the past tense, are quite simple but others are more complex.
• Antonyms: Words that have opposite meanings and can give the reader a context clue to determine the meaning of words and phrases
• Synonyms: Words that have the same meaning and can give the reader a context clue to determine the meaning of words and phrases
• Homophones are two or more words that sound identical and the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings.
• Homographs are words that, as the name suggests, look the same and are spelled (graph) the same (homo) but have two distinctly different meanings and that are either pronounced differently or pronounced the same. For obvious reasons, these words are.
• Contronyms: Words that are spelled the same but they have different meanings; these contronyms can give the reader a context clue to determine the meaning of words and phrases
• Context: Simply defined, context is the surrounding information and clues that occur prior to and after the word or phrase that is not known or misunderstood.

In reality, it is most likely that no human being is able to instantly and spontaneously know the meaning of ALL words and phrases using their memory and by rote. For this reason, many, if not most, human beings use electronic and hard copy references to determine the meanings of words and phrases. For example, when a reader does not know the meaning of a particular word or phrase they can, and should, look it up using a reference such as:

• An online electronic dictionary
• An online electronic thesaurus
• A hard copy dictionary such as the Miriam Webster Dictionary
• A hard copy thesaurus such as Roget’s Thesaurus

Please note that the above references cannot be used on the TEAS examination, therefore, you must employ other skills to determine the meanings of words and phrases that are not known to you.

Skills, other than those used to utilize online and hardcopy references to determine the meanings of words and phrases, will be discussed and described in the section below.

Barriers Relating to the Determination of the Meanings of Words and Phrases

Although there are several skills that can be successfully and accurately employed to discover the meaning of unknown words and phrases, some of these words and phrases are more challenging and difficult than others. Knowledge of some of these more challenging and difficult words and phrases can assist you to discover and decipher the meanings of unknown words and phrases.

Some of the barriers relating to the determination of the meanings of words and phrases include the use of:

• Slang and Jargon
• Colloquialisms
• Idioms
• Figurative Meanings
• Figures of Speech

Slang and Jargon

Slang and jargon are words that have a special meaning to those included in a particular group and without any meaning to those outside of the group and not included in that particular group. Examples of some of these groups that may know the meaning of a particular slang word and jargon include nurses, the young age group, the older age group, school teachers and those in the military.

Because slang and jargon are only readily recognized and defined by only some or a few, it is necessary for others to employ other skills to discover the meaning of slang and jargon in a reading text or with the spoken word.

Examples of slang words include:

• Dig it (Meaning understand it)
• Gig (Meaning a job)
• On the up and up (Meaning proper and honest)
• The cat’s meow (Meaning stylish)
• Spiffy (Meaning fashionable and stylish)
• Left holding the bag (Meaning being falsely accused of something)
• Psych out (Meaning being tricked or deceived)
• Far out (Meaning in style or advanced)
• Hip (Meaning cool and contemporary)
• Cool it (Meaning calm down)
• The skinny (Meaning the facts and the truth)
• Cool (Meaning cool and contemporary)

Examples of slang words that have a special meaning to those included in a group and without any meaning for those not included in the particular group include:

• The brig (Meaning military prison)
• Hall duty (A teacher’s assignment to monitor the hallways when students are moving from one classroom to another or exiting the building at the end of the school day)
• On the beat (Meaning working for police officers)
• On the job (Meaning employed as a police officer)
• Shift (Meaning hours of scheduled work for nurses and police officers)

Many uses of jargon in the written word and with the spoken word include abbreviations while others do not.

Examples of jargon that has a special meaning to those included in a group and without any meaning for those not included in the particular group include:

• NPO (The abbreviation for the Latin term nil per os which means nothing by mouth which is used by nurses and other health care workers)
• AWOL (The military abbreviation for absent without leave. Absent without leave means an unauthorized failure to appear for duty as scheduled)
• Etiology (A cause of a disease or disorder. Etiology is often used among nurses and other healthcare professionals)

Colloquialisms

Colloquialisms are informal words and phrases that are conversational, everyday words and phrases that are acceptable in informal writing and speech, but not acceptable in terms of formal writing and speech. Many colloquialisms are misspelled and some are only understandable to a particular geographic area of the United States. Additionally, colloquialisms have figurative meanings rather than literal meanings. For this reason, skills other than using online and hardcopy resources to discover the meanings of these colloquialisms are necessary.

Some colloquialisms include:

• Put out (Meaning inconvenienced)
• Shove off (Meaning leave)
• Go nuts (Meaning going insane)
• Sort of (Meaning kind of)
• What’s up (Meaning what’s happening)
• Wanna (Meaning want to)
• Going bananas (Meaning going crazy or getting angry)
• All wet (Meaning confused and incorrect)
• Gonna (Meaning going to)
• Buzz off (Meaning go away)
• The middle finger (Meaning a profane gesture)
• Go to hell (Meaning a curse)

Colloquialisms may also vary and differ among various geographical regions in the United States. For example, the southern states of our nation may use the colloquialism like «y’all» which is understandable by southern Americans to mean «all of you» but not always understandable to those in other regions of our country.

Idioms

Idioms are a collection or a group of words that has become somewhat acceptable in the English language because of their ongoing and consistent use, despite the fact that the group of words do not have a literal meaning. Idioms have figurative meanings, therefore, the meaning of an idiom cannot be inferred or deduced in the same manner that the meanings of words and phrases with literal meanings can be inferred or deduced.

Many idioms are proverbs such as, «You cannot judge a book by its cover» and «The pen is mightier than the sword». These proverbs do not have literal meanings, but instead, they have figurative meanings. For example, the proverb «You cannot judge a book by its cover» does not mean that the contents of a book cannot be judged by its exterior cover. Instead, this proverb, as a proverb and an idiom, means that first impressions of people, places and things are not always accurate and they can be highly misleading. For example, a person’s attire does not necessarily offer any facts or reliable information about the person, their character or their values, for example. And the proverb or idiom «The pen is mightier than the sword» has little to do with a pen or a sword. Instead, this proverb suggests that we are much more likely to convince people and succeed with others with our written or oral words rather than force, aggression and/or hostility.

Some commonly used idioms and their figurative meanings are listed below:

• A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
  Figurative meaning: Having something is worth more than having to get more with effort or taking the chance of losing the «one bird» that you already have.

• Stuck between a rock and a hard place
  Figurative meaning: Both choices are equally difficult

• Spill the beans
  Figurative meaning: Divulging a secret

• Kick the bucket
  Figurative meaning: Die

• Hit the sack or hit the hay
  Figurative meaning: Going to bed

• Cold shoulder
  Figurative meaning: Unfriendly and cold

• A piece of cake
  Figurative meaning: Simple and easy

• This situation is black or white
  Figurative meaning: A situation that is clear and unambiguous

• Killing two birds with one stone
  Figurative meaning: Accomplishing more than one thing with a singular action

• Chickening out
  Figurative meaning: Opting out of something because of fear and nervousness

As you are taking your TEAS examination, you may be asked to demonstrate your ability to comprehend a reading passage that contains one or more idioms. If you don’t understand the idiom, you should attempt to discover its meaning by looking at the idiom in the context of the sentence, or the paragraph or the entire reading passage. Context often gives us a lot of information about not only idioms but also about words that you do not know the meaning of.

Figurative Meanings of Words and Phrases

A figurative meaning of a word is the opposite, or antonym, for the literal meaning of a word.

The literal meaning of words is defined as the dictionary definition of the word; the literal meaning of a phrase, clause or sentence can be logically inferred and deduced from the true dictionary accurate definitions of the words in a phrase, clause or sentence. The literal meaning of words is the opposite of the figurative meaning of words.

The figurative meaning of words is defined as the meaning of a phrase, clause or sentence that cannot be logically inferred and deduced from the true dictionary accurate definitions of the words in a phrase, clause or sentence. The figurative meaning of words is the opposite of the literal meaning of words.

Although you may be very certain of some figurative meanings, you may not at all be able to understand and decipher many others. For this reason you will have to use and employ skills other than dictionary skills to determine the meaning of a word or phrase.

Figures of Speech

Some figures of speech like a simile, a metaphor and personification pose challenges to the understanding of comprehension of words and phrases in a reading text as well as with the spoken word.

Similes are a figure of speech that compares two unlike things; similes typically include the word «like» or «as». A metaphor is the figure of speech that involves a comparison of two things that are not similar but they have some single characteristic in common; and personification is also a figure of speech. Personification entails giving lifelike and human characteristics to an inanimate and/or non human thing or being.

Figures of speech, similar to slang, jargon, colloquialisms, idioms, and figurative meanings add confusion with their special challenges to reading comprehension. In fact these elements in the spoken and written word make the English language one of the most, if not the most, difficult language to master.

An example of a simile is «She was as red as a beet».

An example of a metaphor is «Her skin was snow white».

An example of personification is «The wind pranced through the trees.»

In summary, some of the barriers relating to the determination of the meanings of words and phrases, such as those used with and in slang, jargon, colloquialisms, idioms and words with a figurative meaning, are challenging and difficult, however, the skillful use of noncontextual and contextual reading comprehension skills can often overcome these barriers.

Using Skills Other Than Contextual Skills to Discover the Meanings of Unknown Words and Phrases

As just stated above, the skillful use of noncontextual and contextual reading comprehension skills can often overcome barriers to this comprehension.

Some of the skills, other than the use of contextual skills, that facilitate the comprehension and understanding of words and phrases that are unknown to the reader of a text and the receiver of a spoken message include

• Deciphering the Meanings of Words by Mastering the Meanings of Prefixes, Suffixes and Stems of Words

The following can be read more about within our Using Context Clues to Determine the Meaning of Words or Phrases section:

• Getting Clues From Antonyms and Synonyms

The following can be read more about within our Using Conventions of Standard English Spelling section:

• Learning Homophones and Homographs

RELATED TEAS CRAFT & STRUCTURE CONTENT:

• Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion, Biases, and Stereotypes 
• Recognizing the Structure of Texts in Various Formats (Currently here)
• Interpreting the Meaning of Words and Phrases Using Context
• Determining the Denotative Meaning of Words
• Evaluating the Author’s Purpose in a Given Text
• Evaluating the Author’s Point of View in a Given Text
• Using Text Features

1. The
   object of Comparative Lexicology as a branch of linguistic science

Lexicology
(from Gr lexis
‘word’
and logos
‘learning’)
is the part of
linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of the language and the
properties
of words as the main units of language. The term vocabulary
is used to denote the system formed by the sum total of all the words
and
word equivalents
that the language possesses. The term word
denotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the
association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds
capable of a particular grammatical employment. A word therefore is
simultaneously a semantic, grammatical and phonological unit.

Thus,
in the word boy
the
group of sounds [bOI]
is associated with the meaning ‘a male child up to the age of 17 or
18’ (also with some other
meanings, but this is the most frequent) and with a definite
grammatical
employment, i.e. it is a noun and thus has a plural form — boys,
it
is a personal noun and has the Genitive form boy’s
(e.
g. the
boy’s mother), it
may be used in certain syntactic functions.

The
general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific
features of any particular language, is known as general
lexicology.
Linguistic phenomena and properties common to all languages are
generally referred to as language
universals.
Special
lexicology
devotes
its attention to the description
of the characteristic peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given
language.

Every
special lexicology is based on the principles
of general lexicology, and the latter forms a part of general
linguistics.

The
relatively new branch of study is called contrastive
lexicology:
a theoretical basis on which the vocabularies of different languages
can be compared and
described.

The
evolution of any vocabulary, as well as of its single elements, forms
the object of historical
lexicology
or etymology which
discusses the origin of various words, their
change and development, and investigates the linguistic and
extra-linguistic
forces modifying their structure, meaning and usage.

Descriptive
lexicology
deals with the vocabulary of a
given language at a given stage of its development. It studies the
functions
of words and their specific structure as a characteristic inherent in
the system. The descriptive lexicology of the English language deals
with the English word in its morphological and semantical structures,
investigating the interdependence between these two aspects. These
structures
are identified and distinguished by contrasting the nature and
arrangement of their elements.

It
will, for instance, contrast the word boy
with
its derivatives: boyhood,
boyish, boyishly, etc.
It will describe its semantic structure comprising
alongside with its most frequent meaning, such variants as ‘a
son of any age’, ‘a male servant’, and observe its syntactic
functioning and
combining possibilities. This word, for instance, can be also used
vocatively
in such combinations as old
boy, my dear boy, and
attributively, meaning ‘male’, as in boy-friend.

Lexicology
also studies all kinds of semantic grouping and semantic relations:
synonymy,
antonymy, hyponymy, semantic fields,
etc.

Meaning
relations as a whole are dealt with in semantics
— the
study of meaning which is relevant both for lexicology and grammar.

The
distinction between the two basically different ways in which
language
may be viewed, the historical
or diachronic
(Gr
dia
‘through’
and chronos
‘time’)
and the descriptive
or synchronic
(Gr syn
‘together’,
‘with’), is a methodological distinction, a difference of
approach, artificially separating for the purpose
of study what in real language is inseparable, because every
linguistic structure and system exists in a state of constant
development.

The
distinction between a synchronic and a diachronic approach is
due to the Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).¹
Indebted
as we are to him for this important dichotomy, we cannot accept
either his axiom that synchronic linguistics is concerned with
systems and diachronic linguistics with single units or the rigorous
separation
between the two. Subsequent investigations have shown the possibility
and the necessity of introducing the historical point of view into
systematic studies of languages.

Language
being
a means of communication
the social essence is intrinsic
to the language itself. Whole groups of speakers, for example, must
coincide in a deviation, if it is to result in linguistic change.

The
branch of linguistics, dealing with causal relations between the way
the language works and develops, on the one hand, and the facts
of social life, on the other, is termed sociolinguistics.

Some
scholars use this term in a narrower sense, and maintain that it is
the analysis of speech behaviour in small social groups that is the
focal point of sociolinguistic analysis. A. D. Schweitzer has proved
that
such microsociological approach alone cannot give a complete picture
of the sociology of language. It should be combined with the study of
such macrosociological factors as the effect of mass media, the
system of
education, language planning, etc. An analysis of the social
stratification
of languages takes into account the stratification of society as a
whole.

Although
the important distinction between a diachronic and a synchronic, a
linguistic and an extralinguistic approach must always be borne
in mind,
yet it is of paramount importance for the student to take into
consideration that in language reality all the aspects are
interdependent
and cannot be understood one without the other. Every linguistic
investigation must strike a reasonable balance between them.

The
lexicology of present-day English, therefore, although having aims
of its own, different from those of its historical counterpart,
cannot be
divorced from the latter. In what follows not only the present status
of
the English vocabulary is discussed: the description would have been
sadly
incomplete if we did not pay attention to the historical aspect of
the problem — the ways and tendencies of vocabulary development.

Being
aware of the difference between the synchronic approach involving
also social and place variations, and diachronic approach we shall
not tear them asunder, and, although concentrating mainly on the
present
state of the English vocabulary, we shall also have to consider its
development. Much yet remains to be done in elucidating the complex
problems and principles of this process before we can present a
complete and accurate picture of the English vocabulary as a system,
with
specific peculiarities of its own, constantly developing and
conditioned
by the history of the English people and the structure of the
language.

1. The
   connection of Comparative Lexicology with other branches of
   linguistics

The
treatment of words in lexicology cannot be divorced from the study
of all the other elements in the language system to which words
belong. It should be always borne in mind that in reality, in the
actual process
of communication, all these elements are interdependent and stand in
definite relations to one another. We separate them for convenience
of study, and yet to separate them for analysis is pointless, unless
we
are afterwards able to put them back together to achieve a synthesis
and see their interdependence and development in the language system
as a whole.

The
word, as it has already been stated, is studied in several branches
of
linguistics and not in lexicology only, and the latter, in its turn,
is closely
connected with general linguistics, the history of the language,
phonetics,
stylistics, grammar and such new branches of our science as
sociolinguistics,
paralinguistics, pragmalinguistics and some others.¹

The
importance of the connection between lexicology and phonetics
stands explained if we remember that a word is an association of a
given group of sounds with a given meaning, so that top
is
one word, and tip
is
another. Phonemes have no meaning of their own but they serve to
distinguish between meanings. Their function is building
up morphemes, and it is on the level of morphemes that the
form-meaning
unity is introduced into language. We may say therefore that phonemes
participate in signification.

Word-unity
is conditioned by a number of phonological features. Phonemes
follow each other in a fixed sequence so that [pit] is different from
[tip]. The importance of the phonemic make-up may be revealed by the
substitution
test
which isolates the central phoneme of hope
by
setting it against hop,
hoop, heap or
hip.

An
accidental or jocular transposition of the initial sounds of two or
more words, the so-called spoonerisms
illustrate the same

Discrimination
between the words may be based upon stress: the word ‘import
is
recognised as a noun and distinguished from the verb im’port
due
to the position of stress. Stress also distinguishes compounds from
otherwise homonymous word-groups: ‘blackbird
: : ‘black
‘bird.
Each
language also possesses certain phonological features marking
word-limits.

Historical
phonetics and historical phonology can be of great use in
the diachronic study of synonyms, homonyms and polysemy. When sound
changes loosen the ties between members of the same word-family, this
is an important factor in facilitating semantic changes.

The
words whole,
heal, hail, for
instance, are etymologically related.
The
word whole
originally
meant ‘unharmed’, ^;unwounded’.
The early verb whole
meant
to make whole’, hence ‘heal’. Its sense of ‘healthy’ led
to its use as a salutation, as in hail!
Having
in the course of historical development
lost their phonetic similarity, these words cannot now exercise
any restrictive influence upon one another’s semantic development.
Thus, hail
occurs
now in the meaning of ‘call’, even with the purpose to stop and
arrest (used by sentinels).

Meaning
in its turn is indispensable to phonemic analysis because to
establish the phonemic difference between [ou] and [o] it is
sufficient to
know that [houp] means something different from [hop].

All
these considerations are not meant to be in any way exhaustive, they
can only give a general idea of the possible interdependence of the
two
branches of linguistics.

Stylistics,
although from a different angle, studies many problems
treated in lexicology. These are the problems of meaning,
connotations,
synonymy, functional differentiation of vocabulary according to the
sphere of communication and some other issues. For a reader
without some awareness of the connotations and history of words, the
images hidden in their root and their stylistic properties, a
substantial part of the meaning of a literary text, whether prosaic
or poetic, may be lost.

Thus,
for instance, the mood of despair in O. Wilde’s poem “Taedium
Vitae”
(Weariness of Life) is felt due to an accumulation of epithets
expressed
by words with negative, derogatory connotations, such as: desperate,
paltry, gaudy, base, lackeyed, slanderous, lowliest, meanest.

An
awareness of all the characteristic features of words is not only
rewarded
because one can feel the effect of hidden connotations and imagery,
but because without it one cannot grasp the whole essence of the
message the poem has to convey.

The
difference and interconnection between grammar
and lexicology
is
one of the important controversial issues in linguistics and as it is
basic to the problems under discussion in this book, it is necessary
to dwell upon it a little more than has been done for phonetics and
stylistics.

A
close connection between lexicology and grammar is conditioned by
the manifold and inseverable ties between the objects of their study.
Even
isolated words as presented in a dictionary bear a definite relation
to
the grammatical system of the language because they belong to some
part
of speech and conform to some lexico-grammatical characteristics of
the word class to which they belong. Words seldom occur in isolation.
They
are arranged in certain patterns conveying the relations between the
things for which they stand, therefore alongside with their lexical
meaning
they possess some grammatical meaning. Сf.
head
of the committee
and
to
head a committee.

The
two kinds of meaning are often interdependent. That is to say,
certain
grammatical functions and meanings are possible only for the words
whose lexical meaning makes them fit for these functions, and, on
the other hand, some lexical meanings in some words occur only in
definite
grammatical functions and forms and in definite grammatical patterns.

For
example, the functions of a link verb with a predicative expressed by
an adjective cannot be fulfilled by every intransitive verb but are
often taken up by verbs of motion: come
true, fall ill, go wrong, turn red,
run dry and
other similar combinations all render the meaning of ‘become
sth’. The function is of long standing in English and can be
illustrated
by a line from A. Pope who, protesting against blank verse, wrote:
It
is not poetry, but prose run mad.¹

On
the other hand the grammatical form and function of the word affect
its lexical meaning. A well-known example is the same verb go
when
in the continuous tenses, followed by to
and
an infinitive (except go
and
come),
it
serves to express an action in the near and immediate future, or an
intention of future action: You’re
not going to sit there saying
nothing all the evening, both of you, are you? (Simpson)

The
number of words in each language being very great, any lexical
meaning has a much lower probability of occurrence than grammatical
meanings and therefore carries the greatest amount of information in
any discourse determining what the sentence is about.

W.
Chafe, whose influence in the present-day semantic syntax is quite
considerable, points out the many constraints which limit the
co-occurrence of words. He considers the verb as of paramount
importance in sentence semantic structure, and argues that it is the
verb that dictates the presence and character of the noun as its
subject or object. Thus, the verbs frighten,
amuse and
awaken
can
have only animate nouns as their objects.

The
constraint is even narrower if we take the verbs say,
talk or
think
for
which only animate human subjects are possible. It is obvious that
not all animate nouns are human.

This
view is, however, if not mistaken, at least one-sided, because the
opposite is also true: it may happen that the same verb changes its
meaning, when used with personal (human) names and with names of
objects. Compare: The
new girl gave him a strange smile (she
smiled at him) and The
new teeth gave him a strange smile.

These
are by no means the only relations of vocabulary and grammar. We
shall not attempt to enumerate all the possible problems. Let us turn
now to another point of interest, namely the survival of two
grammatically equivalent forms of the same word when they help to
distinguish between its lexical meanings. Some nouns, for instance,
have two separate plurals, one keeping the etymological plural form,
and the other with the usual English ending -s.
For
example, the form brothers
is
used to express the family relationship, whereas the old form
brethren
survives
in ecclesiastical usage or serves to indicate the members of some
club or society; the scientific plural of index,
is
usually indices,
in
more general senses the plural is indexes.
The
plural of genius
meaning
a person
of exceptional intellect is geniuses,
genius in
the sense of evil or good spirit
has the plural form genii.

It
may also happen that a form that originally expressed grammatical
meaning, for example, the plural of nouns, becomes a basis for a new
grammatically conditioned lexical meaning. In this new meaning it is
isolated from the paradigm, so that a new word comes into being.
Arms,
the
plural of the noun arm,
for
instance, has come to mean ‘weapon’. E.g. to
take arms against a sea of troubles (Shakespeare).
The grammatical form is lexicalised; the new word shows itself
capable of further development, a new grammatically conditioned
meaning appears, namely, with the verb in the singular arms
metonymically
denotes the military profession. The abstract noun authority
becomes
a collective in the term authorities
and
denotes ‘a group of persons having the right to control and
govern’. Compare also colours,
customs, looks, manners, pictures, works
which are the best known examples of this isolation, or, as is also
called, lexicalisation
of a grammatical form. In all these
words the suffix -s
signals
a new word with a new meaning.

It
is also worthy of note that grammar and vocabulary make use of the
same technique,
i.e. the formal distinctive features of some
derivational oppositions
between different words are the same
as those of oppositions contrasting different grammatical forms (in
affixation, juxtaposition of stems and sound interchange). Compare,
for example, the oppositions occurring in the lexical system, such as
work
::
worker,
power ::
will-power,
food ::
feed
with
grammatical oppositions:
work
(Inf.)
:: worked
(Past
Ind.), pour
(Inf.)
:: will
pour (Put.
Ind.), feed
(Inf.)
:: fed
(Past
Ind.). Not only are the methods and patterns similar, but the very
morphemes are often homonymous. For
example, alongside the derivational suffixes -en,
one
of which occurs in
adjectives (wooden),
and
the other in verbs (strengthen),
there
are two functional
suffixes, one for Participle II (written),
the
other for the archaic plural form (oxen).

Furthermore,
one and the same word may in some of its meanings function
as a notional word, while in others it may be a form word, i.e. it
may serve to indicate the relationships and functions of other words.
Compare, for instance, the notional and the auxiliary do
in
the following:
What
you do’s nothing to do with me, it doesn’t interest me.

Last
but not least all grammatical meanings have a lexical counterpart
that expresses the same concept. The concept of futurity may be
lexically expressed in the words future,
tomorrow, by and by, time to come, hereafter or
grammatically in the verbal forms shall
come and
will
come. Also
plurality may be described by plural forms of various words:
houses,
boys, books or lexically
by the words: crowd,
party, company,
group, set, etc.

The
ties between lexicology and grammar are particularly strong in
the sphere of word-formation which before lexicology became a
separate branch of linguistics had even been considered as part of
grammar. The characteristic features of English word-building, the
morphological structure of the English word are dependent upon the
peculiarity of the English
grammatical system. The analytical character of the language is
largely responsible for the wide spread of conversion¹
and for the remarkable
flexibility of the vocabulary manifest in the ease with which many
nonce-words²
are formed on the spur of the moment.

This
brief account of the interdependence between the two important parts
of linguistics must suffice for the present. In future we shall have
to return to the problem and treat some parts of it more extensively.

1. A word
   as a fundamental unit of the language

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
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 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 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
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.

The
account of meaning given by Ferdinand de Saussure implies the
definition of a word as a linguistic sign. He calls it ‘signifiant’
(signifier) and what it refers to —
‘signifie’
(that which is signified). By the latter term he understands not the
phenomena of the real world but the ‘concept’ in the speaker’s
and listener’s mind. The situation may be represented by a triangle
(see Fig. 1).

1. Motivation
   as a language universal. Types of motivation.

The
term motivation
is used to denote the relationship existing between the phonemic or
morphemic composition and structural pattern of the word on the one
hand, and its meaning on the other. There are three main types of
motivation: phonetical
motivation,
morphological
motivation,
and
semantic
motivation.

When
there is a certain similarity between the sounds that make up the
word and those referred to by the sense, the motivation
is phonetical.
Examples
are: bang,
buzz, cuckoo, giggle, gurgle, hiss, purr, whistle,
etc.
Here the sounds of a word are imitative of sounds in nature because
what is referred to is a sound or at least, produces a characteristic
sound (cuckoo).
Although
there exists a certain arbitrary element in the resulting phonemic
shape of the word, one can see that this type of motivation is
determined by the phonological system of each language as shown by
the difference of echo-words for the same concept in different
languages.

Within
the English vocabulary there are different words, all sound
imitative, meaning ‘quick, foolish, indistinct talk’: babble,
chatter, gabble, prattle. In
this last group echoic creations combine phonological and
morphological motivation because they contain verbal suffixes -le
and
-er
forming
frequentative verbs. We see therefore that one word may combine
different types of motivation.

Words
denoting noises produced by animals are mostly sound imitative. In
English they are motivated only phonetically so that nouns and verbs
are exactly the same. In Russian the motivation combines phonetical
and morphological motivation. The Russian words блеять
v
and блеяние
n
are equally represented in English by bleat.
Сf.
also: purr
(of
a cat), moo
(of
a cow), crow
(of
a cock), bark
(of
a dog), neigh
(of
a horse) and their Russian equivalents.

The
morphological
motivation
may be quite regular. Thus,
the prefix ex-
means
‘former’ when added to human nouns: ex-filmstar,
ex-president, ex-wife. Alongside
with these cases there is a more general use of ex-:
in
borrowed words it is unstressed and motivation is faded (expect,
export, etc.).

The
derived word re-think
is
motivated inasmuch as its morphological structure suggests the idea
of thinking again. Re-
is
one of the most common prefixes of the English language, it means
‘again’ and ‘back’ and is added to verbal stems or abstract
deverbal noun stems, as in rebuild,
reclaim, resell, resettlement. Here
again these newer formations should be compared with older borrowings
from Latin and French where re-
is
now unstressed, and the motivation faded. Compare re-cover
‘cover
again’ and recover
‘get
better’. In short: morphological motivation is especially obvious
in newly coined words, or at least words created in the present
century. Сf.
detainee,
manoeuvrable, prefabricated, racialist, self-propelling, vitaminise,
etc.
In older words, root words and morphemes motivation is established
etymologically, if at all.

From
the examples given above it is clear that motivation is the way in
which a given meaning is represented in the word. It reflects the
type of nomination process chosen by the creator of the new word.
Some scholars of the past used to call the phenomenon the inner
word
form.

In
deciding whether a word of long standing in the language is
morphologically motivated according to present-day patterns or not,
one should be very careful. Similarity in sound form does not always
correspond to similarity in morphological pattern. Agential suffix
-er
is
affixable to any verb, so that V+-er
means
‘one who V-s’ or ‘something that V-s’: writer,
receiver, bomber, rocker, knocker. Yet,
although the verb numb
exists
in English, number
is
not ‘one who numbs’ but is derived from OFr nombre
borrowed
into English and completely assimilated.

The
cases of regular morphological motivation outnumber irregularities,
and yet one must remember the principle of “fuzzy sets” in coming
across the word smoker
with
its variants: ‘one who smokes tobacco’ and ‘a railway car in
which passengers may smoke’.

Many
writers nowadays instead of the term morphological
motivation,
or
parallel to it,
introduce the term word-building
meaning.
In what follows the term will be avoided because actually it is not
meaning that is dealt with in this concept, but the form of
presentation.

The
third type of motivation is called semantic
motivation.
It is based on the co-existence of direct and figurative meanings of
the same word within the same synchronous system. Mouth
continues
to denote a part of the human face, and at the same time it can
metaphorically apply to any opening or outlet: the
mouth of a river, of a cave, of a furnace. Jacket is
a short coat and also a protective cover for a book, a phonograph
record or an electric wire. Ermine
is
not only the name of a small animal, but also of its fur, and the
office and rank of an English judge because in England ermine was
worn by judges in court. In their direct meaning neither mouth
nor
ermine
is
motivated.

As
to compounds, their motivation is morphological if the meaning of the
whole is based on the direct meaning of the components, and semantic
if the combination of components is used figuratively. Thus, eyewash
‘a
lotion for the eyes’ or headache
‘pain
in the head’, or watchdog
‘a
dog kept for watching property’ are all morphologically motivated.
If, on the other hand, they are used metaphorically as ‘something
said or done
to deceive a person so that he thinks that what he sees is good,
though in
fact it is not’, ‘anything or anyone very annoying’ and ‘a
watchful human guardian’, respectively, then the motivation is
semantic. Compare also heart-breaking,
time-server, lick-spittle, sky-jack v.

An
interesting example of complex morpho-semantic motivation passing
through several stages in its history is the word teenager
‘a
person in his or her teens’. The motivation may be historically
traced as follows: the inflected form of the numeral ten
produced
the suffix -teen.
The
suffix later produces a stem with a metonymical meaning (semantic
motivation), receives the plural ending -s,
and then produces a new noun teens
‘the
years of a person’s life of which the numbers end in -teen,
namely
from 13
to
19’.
In
combination with age
or
aged
the
adjectives teen-age
and
teen-aged
are
coined, as in teen-age
boy, teen-age fashions. A
morphologically motivated noun teenager
is
then formed with the help of the suffix -er
which
is often added to compounds or noun phrases producing personal names
according to the pattern *one connected with…’.

The
pattern is frequent enough. One must keep in mind, however, that not
all words with a similar morphemic composition will have the same
derivational history and denote human beings. E. g. first-nighter
and
honeymooner
are
personal nouns, but two-seater
is
‘a car or an aeroplane seating two persons’, back-hander
is
‘a back-hand stroke in tennis’ and three-decker
‘a
sandwich made of three pieces of bread with two layers of filling’.

When
the connection between the meaning of the word and its form is
conventional that is there is no perceptible reason for the word
having this particular phonemic and morphemic composition, the word
is said to be non-motivated
for the present stage of language development.

Every
vocabulary is in a state of constant development. Words that seem
non-motivated at present may have lost their motivation. The verb
earn
does
not suggest at present any necessary connection with agriculture. The
connection of form and meaning seems purely conventional. Historical
analysis shows, however, that it is derived from OE (ze-)earnian
‘to
harvest’. In Modern English this connection no longer exists and
earn
is
now a non-motivated word. Complex morphological structures tend to
unite and become indivisible units, as St. Ullmann demonstrates
tracing the history of not
which
is a reduced form of nought
from
OE nowiht¹
<no-wiht
‘nothing’.

When
some people recognise the motivation, whereas others do not,
motivation is said to be faded.

Sometimes
in an attempt to find motivation for a borrowed word the speakers
change its form so as to give it a connection with some well-known
word. These cases of mistaken motivation received the name
of folk
etymology.
The phenomenon is not very frequent. Two
examples will suffice: A
nightmare is
not ‘a she-horse that appears at night’ but ‘a terrifying dream
personified in folklore as a female monster’. (OE таrа
‘an
evil spirit’.) The international radio-telephone signal may-day
corresponding
to the telegraphic SOS used by aeroplanes and ships in distress has
nothing to do with the First of May but is a phonetic rendering of
French m’aidez
‘help
me’.

+
Some linguists consider one more type of motivation closely akin to
the imitative forms, namely sound
symbolism.
Some words are supposed to illustrate the meaning more immediately
than do ordinary words. As the same combinations of sounds are used
in many semantically similar words, they become more closely
associated with the meaning. Examples are: flap,
flip, flop, flitter, flimmer, flicker, flutter, flash, flush, flare;
glare, glitter, glow, gloat, glimmer; sleet, slime, slush, where
fl-
is
associated with quick movement, gl-
with
light and fire, sl-
with
mud.

This
sound symbolism phenomenon is not studied enough so far, so that it
is difficult to say to what extent it is valid. There are, for
example, many English words, containing the initial fl-
but
not associated with quick or any other movement: flat,
floor, flour, flower. There
is also nothing muddy in the referents of sleep
or
slender.

To
sum up this discussion of motivation: there are processes in the
vocabulary that compel us to modify the Saussurian principle
according to which linguistic units are independent of the substance
in which they are realised and their associations is a matter of
arbitrary convention. It is already not true for phonetic motivation
and only partly true for all other types. In the process of
vocabulary development, and we witness everyday its intensity, a
speaker of a language creates new words and is understood because the
vocabulary system possesses established associations of form and
meaning.

5.

There
are broadly speaking two schools to

Meaning
of thought in present-day linguistics representing the main lines

of
contemporary thinking on the problem: the referential approach, which

seeks
to formulate the essence of meaning by establishing the
interdependence

between
words and the things or concepts they denote, and the

functional
approach, which studies the functions of a word in speech and

is
less concerned with what meaning is than with how it works.

The
criticism of the referential theories of meaning may be briefly

summarised
as follows:

1.
Meaning, as understood in the referential approach, comprises the

interrelation
of linguistic signs with categories and phenomena outside the

scope
of language. As neither referents (i.e. actual things,
phenomenaeither to the study of the interrelation of the linguistic
sign and referent or

that
of the linguistic sign and concept, all of which, properly speaking,
is

not
the object of linguistic study.

2.
The great stumbling block in referential theories of meaning has
always

been
that they operate with subjective and intangible mental processes.

The
results of semantic investigation therefore depend to a certain

extent
on “the feel of the language” and cannot be verified by another
investigator

analysing
the same linguistic data. It follows that semasiology

has
to rely too much on linguistic intuition and unlike other fields of
linguistic

inquiry
(e.g. phonetics, history of language) does not possess objective

methods
of investigation. Consequently it is argued, linguists

should
either give up the study of meaning and the attempts to define

meaning
altogether, or confine their efforts to the investigation of the

function
of linguistic signs in speech.

Functional
Approach to Meaning

The
functional approach maintains

that
the meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied only through its

relation
to other linguistic-units and not through its relation to either
concept

or
referent. In a very simplified form this view may be illustrated by

the
following: we know, for instance, that the meaning of the two words

move
and
movement
is
different because they function in speech differently.

Comparing
the contexts in which we find these words we cannot fail

to
observe that they occupy different positions in relation to other
words.

(To)
move, e.g.,
can be followed by a noun (move
the
chair), preceded by

a
pronoun (we move),
etc.
The position occupied by the word movement

is
different: it may be followed by a preposition (movement
of
smth),
preceded

by
an adjective (slow movement),
and
so on. As the distribution l
of

the
two words is different, we are entitled to the conclusion that not
only

do
they belong to different classes of words, but that their meanings
are

different
too.

The
same is true of the different meanings of one and the same word.

Analysing
the function of a word in linguistic contexts and comparing

these
contexts, we conclude that; meanings are different (or the same) and

this
fact can be proved by an objective investigation of linguistic data.

Grammatical
Meaning

We
notice, e.g., that word-forms, such as girls,

winters,
joys, tables, etc.
though denoting

widely
different objects of reality have something in common. This

common
element is the grammatical meaning of plurality which can be

found
in all of them.

Thus
grammatical meaning may be defined ,as the component of meaning

recurrent
in identical sets of individual forms of different words, as, e.g.,

the
tense meaning in the word-forms of verbs (asked,
thought, walked,

etc.)
or the case meaning in the word-forms of various nouns (girl’s,

boy’s,
night’s, etc.).

Lexical
Meaning

Thus,
e.g. the word-forms go,
goes, went, going, gone

possess
different grammatical meanings of tense, person and so on, but in

each
of these forms we find one and the same semantic component denoting

the
process of movement. This is the lexical meaning of the word

which
may be described as the component of meaning proper to the word

as
a linguistic unit, i.e. recurrent in all the forms of this word.

The
difference between the lexical and the grammatical components of

meaning
is not to be sought in the difference of the concepts underlying

the
two types of meaning, but rather in the way they are conveyed. The

concept
of plurality, e.g., may be expressed by the lexical meaning of the

world
plurality;
it
may also be expressed in the forms of various words

irrespective
of their lexical meaning, e.g. boys,
girls, joys, etc.
The concept

of
relation may be expressed by the lexical meaning of the word relation

and
also by any of the prepositions, e.g. in,
on, behind, etc.
(cf.
the

book
is in/on,
behind the
table). “

Parf-of-Speech
Meaning(lex-gram)

It
is usual to classify lexical items into major

word-classes
(nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs)

and
minor word-classes (articles, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.).

All
members of a major word-class share a distinguishing semantic

component
which though very abstract may be viewed as the lexical component

of
part-of-speech meaning. For example, the meaning of ‘thingness’

or
substantiality may be found in all the nouns e.g. table,
love,

sugar,
though
they possess different grammatical meanings of number,

case,
etc. It should be noted, however, that the grammatical aspect of the

part-of-speech
meanings is conveyed as a rule by a set of forms. If we describe

the
word as a noun we mean to say that it is bound to possess a set of
forms expressing the grammatical meaning of number (cf. table—
tables), case
(cf. boy,
boy’s) and
so on. A verb is understood to possesssets of forms expressing, e.g.,
tense meaning (worked
— works), mood
meaning (work!
— (I) work), etc.

The
part-of-speech meaning of the words that possess only one form,

e.g.
prepositions, some adverbs, etc., is observed only in their
distribution

(cf.
to
come in (here, there) and
in
(on, under) the
table).

Denotational

and
Connotational Meaning

Proceeding
with the semantic analysis we

observe
that lexical meaning is not homogenous

either
and may be analysed as including denotational and connotational

components.

As
was mentioned above one of the functions of words is to denote

things,
concepts and so on. Users of a language cannot have any knowledge

or
thought of the objects or phenomena of the real world around them

unless
this knowledge is ultimately embodied in words which have essentially

the
same meaning for all speakers of that language. This is the d e —

n
o t a t i o n a l m e a n i n g , i.e. that component of the lexical
meaning

which
makes communication possible. There is no doubt that a
physicist

knows
more about the atom than a singer does, or that an arctic explorer

possesses
a much deeper knowledge of what arctic ice is like than a

man
who has never been in the North. Nevertheless they use the words

atom,
Arctic, etc.
and understand each other.

The
second component of the lexical meaning is the c o n n o t a —

t
i o n a l c o m p o n e n t , i.e. the emotive charge and the
stylistic

value
of the word.

Emotive
Charge

Words
contain an element of emotive evaluation as part of the connotational

meaning;
e.g. a
hovel denotes
‘a small house or cottage’ and besides

implies
that it is a miserable dwelling place, dirty, in bad repair and in

general
unpleasant to live in. When examining synonyms large,
big, tremendous

and
like,
love, worship or
words such as girl,
girlie; dear,

dearie
we
cannot fail to observe the difference in the emotive charge of

the
members of these sets. The emotive charge of the words tremendous,

worship
and
girlie
is
heavier than that of the words large,
like and
girl.

This
does not depend on the “feeling” of the individual speaker but is
true

for
all speakers of English. The emotive charge varies in different
wordclasses.

In
some of them, in interjections, e.g., the emotive element prevails,

whereas
in conjunctions the emotive charge is as a rule practically

non-existent.

Sfylistic
Reference

Words
differ not only in their emotive charge but

also
in their stylistic reference. Stylistically words

can
be roughly subdivided into literary, neutral and colloquial layers.1

The
greater part of the l i t e r а
r у
l a y e r of Modern English vocabulary

are
words of general use, possessing no specific stylistic reference

and
known as n e u t r a l w o r d s . Against
the background of

neutral
words we can distinguish two major subgroups — st a n d a r d

c
o l l o q u i a l words and l i t e r a r y or b o o k i s h words.

This
may be best illustrated by comparing words almost identical in their

denotational
meaning, e. g., ‘parent
— father — dad’.

etc.
The colloquial words may be subdivided into:

1)
Common colloquial words.

2)
Slang, i.e. words which are often regarded as a violation of the

norms
of Standard English, e.g. governor
for
‘father’, missus
for
‘wife’, a

gag
for
‘a joke’, dotty
for
‘insane’.

3)
Professionalisms, i.e. words used in narrow groups bound by the

same
occupation, such as, e.g., lab
for
‘laboratory’, hypo
for
‘hypodermic

syringe’,
a
buster for
‘a bomb’, etc.

4)
Jargonisms, i.e. words marked by their use within a particular social

group
and bearing a secret and cryptic character, e.g. a
sucker —
‘a person

who
is easily deceived’, a
squiffer —
‘a concertina’.

5)
Vulgarisms, i.e. coarse words that are not generally used in public,

e.g.
bloody,
hell, damn, shut up, etc.

6)
Dialectical words, e.g. lass,
kirk, etc.

7)
Colloquial coinages, e.g. newspaperdom,
allrightnik, etc.

Emotive
Charge and

Stylistic
Reference

Stylistic
reference and emotive charge of

words
are closely connected and to a certain

degree
interdependent.1 As a rule stylistically

coloured
words, i.e. words belonging to all stylistic layers except the
neutral

style
are observed to possess a considerable emotive charge. That can

be
proved by comparing stylistically labelled words with their neutral

synonyms.
The colloquial words daddy,
mammy are
more emotional than

the
neutral father,
mother; the
slang words mum,
bob are
undoubtedly

more
expressive than their neutral counterparts silent,
shilling, the
poetic

yon
and
steed
carry
a noticeably heavier emotive charge than their neutral

synonyms
there
and
horse.
Words
of neutral style, however, may also

differ
in the degree of emotive charge. We see, e.g., that the words large,

big,
tremendous, though
equally neutral as to their stylistic reference are

not
identical as far as their emotive charge is concerned.

7.-8.

Nature
of Semantic

Chang

There
are two kinds of association

involved
as a rule in various semantic changes namely: a) similarity of

meanings,
and b) contiguity of meanings.

S
i m i l a r i t y of m e a n i n g s or metaphor may be described

as
a semantic process of associating two referents, one of which in some

way
resembles the other. The word hand,
e.g.,
acquired in the 16th century

the
meaning of ‘a pointer of a clock of a watch’ because of the
similarity

of
one of the functions performed by the hand (to point at something)

and
the function of the clockpointer. Since metaphor is based on the

perception
of similarities it is only natural that when an analogy is obvious,

it
should give rise to a metaphoric meaning. This can be observed in

the
wide currency of metaphoric meanings of words denoting parts of the

human
body in various languages (cf. ‘the leg of the table’, ‘the
foot of the

hill’,
etc.). Sometimes it is similarity of form, outline, etc. that
underlies

the
metaphor. The words warm
and
cold
began
to denote certain qualities

of
human voices because of some kind of similarity between these
qualities

and
warm and cold temperature. It is also usual to perceive similarity

between
colours and emotions.

It
has also been observed that in many speech communities colour

terms,
e.g. the words black
and
white,
have
metaphoric meanings in addition

to
the literal denotation of colours.

C
o n t i g u i t y of meanings or metonymy may be described as

the
semantic process of associating two referents one of which makes part

of
the other or is closely connected with it.

,
This can be perhaps best illustrated by the use of the word tongue
—

‘the
organ of speech’ in the meaning of ‘language’ (as in mother
tongue;

cf.
also L.
lingua,
Russ.
язык).
The
word bench
acquired
the meaning

‘judges,
magistrates’ because it was on the bench
that
the judges used to

sit
in law courts, similarly the
House acquired
the meaning of ‘members

of
the House’ (Parliament).

It
is generally held that metaphor plays a more important role in the

change
of meaning than metonymy. A more detailed analysis would show

that
there are some semantic changes that fit into more than the two
groups

discussed
above. A change of meaning, e.g., may be brought about by the

association
between the sound-forms of two words. The word boon,
e.g.”,

originally
meant ‘prayer, petition’, ‘request’, but then came to denote
‘a

thing
prayed or asked for’. Its current meaning is ‘a blessing, an
advantage,

a
thing to be thanked for.’ The change of meaning was probably due

to
the similarity to the sound-form of the adjective boon
(an
Anglicised

form
of French bon
denoting
‘good, nice’).

Within
metaphoric and metonymic changes we can single out various

subgroups.
Here, however, we shall confine ourselves to a very general

outline
of the main types of semantic association as discussed above. Amore
detailed analysis of the changes of meaning and the nature of such

changes
belongs in the diachronic or historical lexicology and lies outside

the
scope of the present textbook

Results
of Semantic

Chang

Results
of semantic change can be generally

observed
in the changes of the denotational

meaning
of the word (restriction and extension

of
meaning) or in the alteration of its connotational component
(amelioration

and
deterioration of meaning).

C
h a n g e s in t h e d e n o t a t i o n a l m e a n i n g may result

in
the restriction of the types or
range
of referents denoted by the

word.
This may be illustrated by the semantic development of the word

hound
(OE.
hund)
which
used to denote ‘a dog of any breed’ but now

denotes
only ‘a dog used in the chase’. This is also the case with the
word

fowl
(OE.
fuzol,
fuzel) which
in old English denoted ‘any bird’, but in

Modern
English denotes ‘a domestic hen or cock’. This is generally
described

as
“restriction of meaning” and if the word with the new meaning

comes
to be used in the specialised vocabulary of some limited group

within
the speech community it is usual to speak of s p e c i a l i s a —

t
i o n of m e a n i n g . For example, we can observe restriction and

specialisation
of meaning in the case of the verb to
glide (OE.
glidan)

which
had the meaning ‘to move gently and smoothly’ and has now
acquired

a
restricted and specialised meaning ‘to fly with no engine’ (cf. a

glider).

Changes
in the denotational meaning may also result in the application

of
the word to a wider variety of referents. This is commonly described
as

e
x t e n s i o n of m e a n i n g and may be illustrated by the word

target
which
originally meant ‘a small round shield’ (a diminutive of

targe,
сf.
ON.
targa)
but
now means ‘anything that is fired at’ and also

figuratively
‘any result aimed at’.

If
the word with the extended meaning passes from the specialised
vocabulary

into
common use, we describe the result of the semantic change

as
the g e n e r a l i s a t i o n of m e a n i n g . The word camp,
e.g.,

which
originally was used only as a military term and meant ‘the place

where
troops are lodged in tents’ (cf. L.
campus
— ‘exercising ground for

the
army) extended and generalised its meaning and now denotes ‘temporary

quarters’
(of travellers, nomads, etc.).

As
can be seen from the examples discussed above it is mainly the
denotational

component
of the lexical meaning that is affected while the

connotational
component remains unaltered. There are other cases, however,

when
the changes in the connotational meaning come to the fore.

These
changes, as a rule accompanied by a change in the denotational’

component,
may be subdivided into two main groups: a) p e j o r a t i v e

d
e v e l o p m e n t or the acquisition by the word of some derogatory

emotive
charge, and b) a m e l i o r a t i v e d e v e l o p m e n t or

the
improvement of the connotational component of meaning. The semantic

change
in the word boor
may
serve to illustrate the first group. This

word
was originally used to denote ‘a villager, a peasant’ (cf. OE.
zebur

‘dweller’)
and then acquired a derogatory, contemptuous connotational

meaning
and came to denote ‘a clumsy or ill-bred fellow’. The
ameliorative

development
of the connotational meaning may be observed in thechange of the
semantic structure of the word minister
which
in one of its

meanings
originally denoted ‘a servant, an attendant’, but now — ‘a
civil servant of higher rank, a person administering a department

of
state or accredited by one state to another’.

It
is of interest to note that in derivational clusters a change in the

connotational
meaning of one member doe’s not necessarily affect a the

others.
This peculiarity can be observed in the words accident аn
accidental.

The
lexical meaning of the noun accident has undergone pejorative

development
and denotes not only ’something that happens by chance’,

but
usually’something unfortunate’. The derived adjective accidental
does

not
possess in its semantic structure this negative connotational meaning

(cf.
also fortune: bad fortune, good fortune and fortunate).

A technology that strives to understand human communication must be able to understand meaning in language. In this post, we take a deeper look at a core component of our expert.ai technology, the semantic disambiguator, and how it determines word meaning and sentence meaning via disambiguation.

To start, let’s clarify our definitions of words and sentences from a linguistic point of view.

Word Meaning and Sentence Meaning in Semantics

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases, sentences and text. This can be broken down into subcategories such as formal semantics (logical aspects of meaning), conceptual semantics (cognitive structure of meaning) and today’s focus of lexical semantics (word and phrase meaning).

A “word” is a string of characters that can have different meanings (jaguar: car or animal?; driver: one who drives a vehicle or the part of a computer?; rows, the plural noun or the third singular person of the verb to row?). A “sentence” is a group of words that express a complete thought. To fully capture the meaning of a sentence, we need to understand how words relate to other words.

Going Back to School

To understand word meaning and sentence meaning, our semantic disambiguator engine must be able to automatically resolve ambiguities with any word in a text.

Let’s consider this sentence:

John Smith is accused of the murders of two police officers.

To understand the word meaning and sentence meaning in any phrase, the disambiguator performs four consecutive phases of analysis:

Lexical Analysis

During this phase, the stream of text is broken up into meaningful elements called tokens. The sequence of “atomic” elements resulting from this process will be further elaborated in the next phase of analysis.

• John > human proper noun
• Smith > human proper noun
• is > verb
• accused > noun
• of > preposition
• the > article

Grammatical Analysis

During this phase, each token in the text is assigned a part of speech. The semantic disambiguator can recognize any inflected forms and conjugations as well as identify nouns, proper nouns and so on.

Starting from a mere sequence of tokens, what results from this elaboration is a sequence of elements. Some of them have been grouped to form collocations (e.g., police officer) and every token or group of tokens is represented by a block that identifies its part of speech.

• John Smith > human proper noun
• is accused > predicate nominal

Syntactical Analysis

During this phase, the disambiguator operates several word grouping operations on different levels to reproduce the way that words are linked to one another to form sentences. Sentences are further analyzed to attribute a logical role to each phrase (subject, predicate, object, verb, complement, etc.) and identify relationships between them and other complements whenever possible. In our example, the sentence is made of a single independent clause, where John Smith is recognized as subject of the sentence.

• John Smith > subject
• is accused > nominal predicate

Semantic Analysis

During the last and most complex phase, the tokens recognized during grammatical analysis are associated with a specific meaning. Though each token can be associated to several concepts, the choice is made by considering the base form of each token with respect to its part of speech, the grammatical and syntactical characteristics of the token, the position of the token in the sentence and its relation to the syntactical elements surrounding it.

Like the human brain, the disambiguator eliminates all candidate terms for each token except one, which will be definitively assigned to the token. When it comes across an unknown element in a text (e.g., human proper names), it tries to infer word meaning and sentence meaning by considering the context in which each token appears to determine its meaning.

• Is accused > to accuse > to blame
• police officer > policeman, police woman, law enforcement officer

---

Want to learn more about the disambiguation process? Take a deep dive in our brief, “Disambiguation: The Key to Contextualization“.

In semantics and pragmatics, meaning is the message conveyed by words, sentences, and symbols in a context. Also called lexical meaning or semantic meaning.

In The Evolution of Language (2010), W. Tecumseh Fitch points out that semantics is «the branch of language study that consistently rubs shoulders with philosophy. This is because the study of meaning raises a host of deep problems that are the traditional stomping grounds for philosophers.»

Here are more examples of meaning from other writers on the subject:

Word Meanings

«Word meanings are like stretchy pullovers, whose outline contour is visible, but whose detailed shape varies with use: ‘The proper meaning of a word . . . is never something upon which the word sits like a gull on a stone; it is something over which the word hovers like a gull over a ship’s stern,’ noted one literary critic [Robin George Collingwood].»
(Jean Aitchison, The Language Web: The Power and Problem of Words. Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Meaning in Sentences

«It may justly be urged that, properly speaking, what alone has meaning is a sentence. Of course, we can speak quite properly of, for example, ‘looking up the meaning of a word’ in a dictionary. Nevertheless, it appears that the sense in which a word or phrase ‘has a meaning’ is derivative from the sense in which a sentence ‘has a meaning’: to say a word or phrase ‘has a meaning’ is to say that there are sentences in which it occurs which ‘have meanings’; and to know the meaning which the word or phrase has, is to know the meanings of sentences in which it occurs. All the dictionary can do when we ‘look up the meaning of a word’ is to suggest aids to the understanding of sentences in which it occurs. Hence it appears correct to say that what ‘has meaning’ in the primary sense is the sentence.» (John L. Austin, «The Meaning of a Word.» Philosophical Papers, 3rd ed., edited by J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford University Press, 1990)

Different Kinds of Meaning for Different Kinds of Words

«There can’t be a single answer to the question ‘Are meanings in the world or in the head?’ because the division of labor between sense and reference is very different for different kinds of words. With a word like this or that, the sense by itself is useless in picking out the referent; it all depends on what is in the environs at the time and place that a person utters it. . . . Linguists call them deictic terms . . .. Other examples are here, there, you, me, now, and then. «At the other extreme are words that refer to whatever we say they mean when we stipulate their meanings in a system of rules. At least in theory, you don’t have to go out into the world with your eyes peeled to know what a touchdown is, or a member of parliament, or a dollar, or an American citizen, or GO in Monopoly, because their meaning is laid down exactly by the rules and regulations of a game or system. These are sometimes called nominal kinds—kinds of things that are picked out only by how we decide to name them.» (Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought. Viking, 2007)

Two Types of Meaning: Semantic and Pragmatic

«It has been generally assumed that we have to understand two types of meaning to understand what the speaker means by uttering a sentence. . . . A sentence expresses a more or less complete propositional content, which is semantic meaning, and extra pragmatic meaning comes from a particular context in which the sentence is uttered.» (Etsuko Oishi, «Semantic Meaning and Four Types of Speech Act.» Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium, ed. P. Kühnlein et al. John Benjamins, 2003)

Pronunciation: ME-ning

Etymology

From the Old English, «to tell of»

phrase | word | Synonyms | Word is a synonym of phrase. Word is a conjunction of phrase. In transitive terms the difference between phrase and word is that phrase is to express (an action, thought or idea) by means of words while word is to ply or overpower with words. As nouns the difference between phrase and word is that phrase is a short written or spoken expression while word is the smallest unit of language which has a particular meaning and can be expressed by itself; the smallest discrete, meaningful unit of language. Contrast morpheme. As verbs the difference between phrase and word is that phrase is to perform a passage with the correct phrasing while word is to say or write (something) using particular words; to phrase (something). As an interjection word is truth, indeed, 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. Other Comparisons: What’s the difference? phrase English Noun (en noun) A short written or spoken expression. (grammar) A word or group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence, usually consisting of a head, or central word, and elaborating words. * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-11-30, volume=409, issue=8864, magazine=(The Economist), author=Paul Davis, title= Letters: Say it as simply as possible , passage=Congratulations on managing to use the phrase “preponderant criterion” in a chart (“ On your marks”, November 9th). Was this the work of a kakorrhaphiophobic journalist set a challenge by his colleagues, or simply an example of glossolalia?}} (music) A small section of music in a larger piece. (archaic) A mode or form of speech; diction; expression. * Tennyson phrases of the hearth * Shakespeare Thou speak’st / In better phrase and matter than thou didst. Synonyms * (expression) figure of speech, locution * See also Derived terms * adjective phrase * adverb phrase * antecedent phrase * bombard phrase * catchphrase * consequent phrase * determiner phrase * empty phrase * noun phrase * participial phrase * phrasal * phrase book * phrase structure * phrasemaker * phraseology * prepositional phrase * set phrase * turn a phrase * verb phrase Verb (phras) (music) To perform a passage with the correct phrasing. (music) To divide into melodic phrases. To express (an action, thought or idea) by means of words. * Shakespeare These suns — for so they phrase ’em. word English Etymology 1 From (etyl) word, from (etyl) verb. Noun (en noun) {{examples-right, The word inventory may be pronounced with four syllables (/??n.v?n.t?.?i/) or only three (/?n?v?n.t?i/). The word island» is six letters long; the »s» has never been pronounced but was added under the influence of »isle . The word me signed in American Sign Language. }} The smallest unit of language which has a particular meaning and can be expressed by itself; the smallest discrete, meaningful unit of language. * 1986 , David Barrat, Media Sociology (ISBN 041505110X), page 112: The word , whether written or spoken, does not look like or sound like its meaning — it does not resemble its signified. We only connect the two because we have learnt the code — language. Without such knowledge, ‘Maggie’ would just be a meaningless pattern of shapes or sounds. * 2009 , Jack Fitzgerald, Viva La Evolucin (ISBN 055719833X), page 233: Brian and Abby signed the word‘ »clothing», in which the thumbs brush down the chest as though something is hanging there. They both spoke the »’word»’ »clothing». Brian then signed the »’word for »change , * # The smallest discrete unit of spoken language which has a particular meaning, composed of one or more phonemes and one or more morphemes. #* 1894 , Alex. R. Mackwen, The Samaritan Passover», in »Littell’s Living Age , series 6, volume 1: Then all was silent save the voice of the high priest, whose words grew louder and louder, #* # The smallest discrete unit of written language which has a particular meaning, composed of one or more letters or symbols and one or more morphemes. #* , act 2, scene 2: Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words‘, »’words»’, ‘ words . #* 2003 , Jan Furman, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon: A Casebook (ISBN 0195146352), page 194: The name was a confused gift of love from her father, who could not read the word but picked it out of the Bible for its visual shape, #* 2009 , Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read (ISBN 1101152400): Well-meaning academics even introduced spelling absurdities such as the “s” in the word “island,” a misguided Renaissance attempt to restore the etymology of the [unrelated] Latin word insula . # A discrete, meaningful unit of language which is approved by some authority. #* 1896 , (Israel Zangwill), Without Prejudice , page 21: “Ain’t! How often am I to tell you ain’t ain’t a word ?” #* 1999 , Linda Greenlaw, The Hungry Ocean , Hyperion, page 11: Fisherwoman isn’t even a word . It’s not in the dictionary. # A sequence of letters or characters, or sounds, which (does not necessarily belong to a language or have a meaning, but which) is considered as a discrete entity. #* 1974 , Thinking Goes to School: Piaget’s Theory in Practice (ISBN 0199839077), page 183: In still another variation, the nonsense word is presented and the teacher asks, «What sound was in the beginning of the word?» «In the middle?» and so on. The child should always respond with the phoneme; he should not use letter labels. #* 2003 , How To Do Everything with Your Tablet PC (ISBN 0072227710), page 278: I wrote a nonsense word , «umbalooie,» in the Input Panel’s Writing Pad. Input Panel converted it to «cembalos» and displayed it in the Text Preview pane. #* 2006 , Scribal Habits and Theological Influences in the Apocalypse (ISBN 3161491122), page 141: Here the scribe has dropped the ?? from ?????????, thereby creating the nonsense word ???????. #* 2013 , The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Language (ISBN 1317859979), page 91: If M. V. has sustained impairment to a phonological output process common to reading and repetition, we might anticipate that her mispronunciations will partially reflect the underlying phonemic form of the nonsense word . Something which is like such a unit of language: # (telegraphy) A unit of text equivalent to five characters and one space. # (computing) A fixed-size group of bits handled as a unit by a machine (on many machines, 16 bits or two bytes). # (computer science) A finite string which is not a command or operator. # (group theory) A group element, expressed as a product of group elements. The fact or act of speaking, as opposed to taking action. * 1811 , (Jane Austen), (Sense and Sensibility) : she believed them still so very much attached to each other, that they could not be too sedulously divided in word and deed on every occasion. * 2004 , Richard Williams, The Guardian , 8 Sep 2004: As they fell apart against Austria, England badly needed someone capable of leading by word and example. * 1611 , Bible , Authorized Version, (w) XXVI.75: And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. * (1809-1892) She said; but at the happy word «he lives», / My father stooped, re-fathered, o’er my wound. * (Charles Dickens) (1812-1870) There is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark. * 1945 April 1, Sebastian Haffner, in The Observer : «The Kaiser laid down his arms at a quarter to twelve. In me, however, they have an opponent who ceases fighting only at five minutes past twelve,» said Hitler some time ago. He has never spoken a truer word . * 2011 , (David Bellos), Is That a Fish in Your Ear? , Penguin 2012, page 126: Despite appearances to the contrary […] dragomans stuck rigidly to their brief, which was not to translate the Sultan’s words, but his word . A watchword or rallying cry, a verbal signal (even when consisting of multiple words). * 1592 , William Shakespeare, : Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George, inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons! * 1647 (published), John Fletcher and William Rowley, (The Maid in the Mill) (published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio), scene 3: I have the word : sentinel, do thou stand; mum’s the word (lb) A proverb or motto. * 1499 , (John Skelton), The Bowge of Court : Among all other was wrytten in her trone / In golde letters, this worde , whiche I dyde rede: / Garder le fortune que est mauelz]] et [[bon, bone . * 1599 , Ben Jonson, (Every Man out of His Humour) : Let the word be ‘Not without mustard’. Your crest is very rare, sir. * 1646 , , The Balm of Gilead : The old word is, ‘What the eye views not, the heart rues not.’ * Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. An order; a request or instruction; an expression of will. Don’t fire till I give the word Their mother’s word was law. A promise; an oath or guarantee. A brief discussion or conversation. (in the plural) Angry debate or conversation; argument. * 1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , : And that worde‘ was made flesshe, and dwelt amonge vs, and we sawe the glory off yt, as the glory off the only begotten sonne off the father, which ‘ worde was full of grace, and verite. Usage notes * (distinct unit of language) In English and other space-delimited languages, it is customary to treat «word» as referring to any sequence of characters delimited by spaces. However, this is not applicable to languages such as Chinese and Japanese, which are normally written without spaces, or to languages such as Vietnamese, which are written with a space between each syllable. * (computing) The size (length) of a word, while being fixed in a particular machine or processor family design, can be different in different designs, for many reasons. See for a full explanation. Quotations * 1897 , Ouida, The New Woman», in »An Altruist and Four Essays , page 239: *: But every word‘, whether written or spoken, which urges the woman to antagonism against the man, every ‘ word which is written or spoken to try and make of her a hybrid, self-contained opponent of men, makes a rift in the lute to which the world looks for its sweetest music. * 2011 , John Lehew (senior), The Encouragement of Peter (ISBN 1615074708), page 108: *: In what sense is God’s Word living? No other word , whether written or spoken, has the power that the Bible has to change lives. * Synonyms * (distinct unit of language) vocable * (something promised) promise * (God) God, Logos * (Bible) word of God, Bible * See also Verb (en verb) (lb) To say or write (something) using particular words; to phrase (something). I’m not sure how to word this letter to the council. To flatter with words, to cajole. * 1607 , William Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra , act 5, scene 2: He words‘ me, girls, he ‘ words me, that I should not / be noble to myself. (lb) To ply or overpower with words. * 1621 November 30, James Howell, letter to Francis Bacon, from Turin: if one were to be worded to death, Italian is the fittest Language [for that task] * 1829 April, Webster’s Dictionary», in »The North American Review , volume 28, page 438: if a man were to be worded to death, or stoned to death by words, the High-Dutch were the fittest [language for that task]. To conjure with a word. * (Robert South), Sermon on Psalm XXXIX. 9 : Against him who could word‘ heaven and earth out of nothing, and can when he pleases ‘ word them into nothing again. * 1994 , Liminal Postmodernisms»/»Postmodern Studies , volume 8, page 162: «Postcolonialism» might well be another linguistic construct, desperately begging for a referent that will never show up, simply because it never existed on its own and was literally worded into existence by the very term that pretends to be born from it. * 2013 , Carla Mae Streeter, Foundations of Spirituality: The Human and the Holy (ISBN 0814680712), page 92: The being of each person is worded into existence in the Word, To speak, to use words; to converse, to discourse. * 1818 , John Keats, Hyperion : Thus wording timidly among the fierce: / ‘O Father, I am here the simplest voice, […]’ Synonyms * (say or write using particular words) express, phrase, put into words, state Interjection (en interjection) (slang, AAVE) truth, indeed, 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. * «Yo, that movie was epic!» / «Word‘?» («You speak the truth?») / «‘ Word .» («I speak the truth.») (slang, emphatic, stereotypically, AAVE) An abbreviated form of word up; a statement of the acknowledgment of fact with a hint of nonchalant approval. * 2004 , Shannon Holmes, Never Go Home Again: A Novel , page 218 » Know what I’m sayin’?» / «Word !» the other man strongly agreed. «Let’s do this — « * 2007 , Gabe Rotter, Duck Duck Wally: A Novel , page 105 «» * 2007 , Relentless Aaron The Last Kingpin , page 34 «» Derived terms * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * See also * * * * * * * * * * * * Statistics *