Word definition by description

How do I use OneLook’s thesaurus / reverse dictionary?

OneLook lets you find any kind of word for any kind of writing.
Like a traditional thesaurus, you
can use it to find synonyms and antonyms, but it’s far more flexible.
Describe what you’re looking for with a single word, a few words,
or even a whole sentence. Type in your description and hit
Enter (or select a word that shows up in the autocomplete preview)
to see the related words.
You can order, filter, and explore the
words that come back in a variety of creative ways.

Here’s a video which
goes over some of the basics.

What are some examples?

Exploring the results

Click on any result to see definitions and usage examples tailored to your search,
as well as links to follow-up searches and additional usage information when available.
OneLook knows about more than 2 million different
words and expressions covering every topic under the sun.
Try exploring a favorite topic for a while and you’ll be surprised
how much new stuff there is to learn!

Ordering the results

Your results will initially appear with the most closely related word shown first,
the second-most closely shown second, and so on.
You can re-order the results in a variety of different ways, including
alphabetically, by length, by popularity, by modernness, by formality, and by other
aspects of style. Click the
box that says «Closest meaning first…» to see them all.
(Here’s a short video about sorting and filtering
with OneLook Thesaurus.)

Filtering the results

You can refine your search by clicking on the «Advanced filters» button
on the results page. This lets you narrow down your results to match
a certain starting letter, number of letters, number of syllables, related
concept, meter, vowel sound, or number of syllables.
Read more details on filters if you’re interested in how they work.

I’m only looking for synonyms! What’s with all of these weird results?

For some kinds of searches only the
first result or the first few results are truly synonyms
or good substitutions for your search word.
We highlight these results in yellow.
Beyond that, the results are meant to inspire you to consider similar words and adjacent
concepts. Not all of the results will make sense at first, but they’re all
connected with your search in some way. We’d rather give you too many options than
too few. If you’re unsure of a word, we urge you to click on
it to check its definitions and usage examples before using it in your Oscars
acceptance speech or honors thesis.

Other ways to access this service:

• Drag this link to your browser’s bookmarks bar for a convenient button that goes to the thesaurus:

      

  OneLook

• Enter onelook.com/word into your browser’s address bar to go directly to the OneLook Thesaurus entry for word.
• We offer a OneLook Thesaurus iPhone/iPad app
  for a low subscription fee, with a two-week free trial.
  This gives you OneLook at your fingertips, and
  several cool app-only features, while helping us maintain the service for all!
• If you use Google Docs, the thesaurus is integrated into the free OneLook Thesaurus Google Docs Add-On as the «Synonyms» button. (Wildcard patterns are not yet suppoerted by this add-on.)
• If you regularly use the main OneLook site, you can put colon (:) into any OneLook search box,
  followed by a description, to go directly to the thesaurus.
• If you’re a developer, the Datamuse API gives you access to the core features of this site.

Is this available in any language other than English?

The same interface is now available in Spanish at OneLook Tesauro
as a beta version. More languages are coming!

How does it work?

We use a souped-up version of our own Datamuse API,
which in turn uses several lingustic resources described in the «Data sources» section
on that page. The definitions come from Wiktionary,
Wikipedia, and WordNet.
Here are some known problems
with the current system.

Much gratitude to Gultchin et al for the algorithm behind the «Most funny-sounding» sort order.

Profanity and problematic word associations

If you’re using this site with children, be forewarned you’ll
find profanity and other vulgar expressions if you use OneLook frequently.
(We take an unflinching look at how words have actually been used; scrubbing out
hurtful wordswould be a disservice to everyone.)

Some of the thesaurus results come from a statistical analysis of the
words in a large collection of books written in the past two
centuries. A handful of times we’ve found that this analysis can lead
us to suggest word associations that reflect racist or harmful
stereotypes present in this source material. If you see one of these,
please know that we do not endorse what the word association implies.
In egregious cases we will remove it from the site if you
report it to us via the feedback link below.

Privacy

No personally identifying information is ever collected on this site
or by any add-ons or apps associated with OneLook. OneLook Thesaurus sends
your search query securely to the Datamuse API, which keeps a log file of
the queries made to the service in the last 24 hours. The log file is deleted
after 24 hours and we do not retain any long-term information about your
IP address or invididual queries.

Who’s behind this site and where can I send my comments and complaints feedback?

OneLook is a service of Datamuse.
You can send us feedback here.

The sunburst logo (🔆) is the emoji symbol for «high
brightness», which we aspire to create with OneLook. (The
graphic came from the open-source Twemoji
project.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

27

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

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

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

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

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

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

28

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

29

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

30

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

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

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

Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]

• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #
• #

• Go to Preferences page and choose from different actions for taps or mouse clicks.

Where can I search for words using descriptive sentences? For example, now I’m looking for a word meaning «to purify (by hand) a quantity of grain and take away anything that isn’t good grain.»

How could I get words like that? I know it in my first-language, but I don’t have a classic version of it to use in automatic translators.

Maybe a search engine that uses content words from my description and offers words that could mean the same with their dictionary definitions. Nothing I’d tried in (translate.)google.com gave me the desired result.

---

Update:

An example dictionary that I use is (Oxford’s Word-Power Dictionary). It’s not for the purpose of the question but for clarification.

Oxford’s has a 3,000 word list of ‘bare-bone-essentials.’ It contains the most-used words in English and all of the grammatical operators. Ideally, these are the words necessary for a learner to use an English-English dictionary such as Oxford’s. The descriptions of words in Oxford’s rely on this list for definitions.

An electronic (web-based) dictionary for word-meaning-search should have a larger list (maybe 10,000) and use a thesaurus to down-level difficult words a user may use in the search then, using all content words in the search phrase, present a list of words whose definitions seem appropriate. Another regular dictionary may be used from there.

• Example:

  Search query: «to use hands to purify a quantity of grain taking away anything that isn’t good grain.»

  Content Words: «use-hands; purify; quantity-of-grain; taking-away; anything; isn’t; good-grain»

  Filtered: «use-hands; clean; quantity-of-seeds; take-away;anything; not-good-grain»

  Words: «1; 2; 3; 4» that use the content words to varying degrees.

And that’s a five minutes’ work!

---

PS. Sorry about the delay; connection problems…

Definition of a Word

A word is a speech sound or a combination of sound having a particular meaning for an idea, object or thought and has a spoken or written form. In English language word is composed by an individual letter (e.g., ‘I’), I am a boy, or by combination of letters (e.g., Jam, name of a person) Jam is a boy. Morphology, a branch of linguistics, deals with the structure of words where we learn under which rules new words are formed, how we assigned a meaning to a word? how a word functions in a proper context? how to spell a word? etc.

Examples of word: All sentences are formed by a series of words. A sentence starts with a word, consists on words and ends with a word. Therefore, there is nothing else in a sentence than a word. 

Some different examples are: Boy, kite, fox, mobile phone, nature, etc.

Different Types of Word

There are many types of word; abbreviation, acronym, antonym, back formation, Clipped words (clipping), collocation, compound words, Content words, contractions, derivation, diminutive, function word, homograph, homonym, homophone, legalism, linker, conjunct, borrowed, metonym, monosyllable, polysyllable, rhyme, synonym, etc. Read below for short introduction to each type of word.

Abbreviation

An abbreviation is a word that is a short form of a long word.

Example: Dr for doctor, gym for gymnasium

Acronym

Acronym is one of the commonly used types of word formed from the first letter or letters of a compound word/ term and used as a single word.

Example: PIA for Pakistan International Airline

Antonym

An antonym is a word that has opposite meaning of an another word

Example: Forward is an antonym of word backward or open is an antonym of word close.

Back formation

Back formation word is a new word that is produced by removing a part of another word.

Example: In English, ‘tweeze’ (pluck) is a back formation from ‘tweezers’.

Clipped words

Clipped word is a word that has been clipped from an already existing long word for ease of use.

Example: ad for advertisement

Collocation

Collocation is a use of certain words that are frequently used together in form of a phrase or a short sentence.

Example: Make the bed,

Compound words

Compound words are created by placing two or more words together. When compound word is formed the individual words lose their meaning and form a new meaning collectively. Both words are joined by a hyphen, a space or sometime can be written together. 

Example: Ink-pot, ice cream,

Content word

A content word is a word that carries some information or has meaning in speech and writing.

Example:  Energy, goal, idea.

Contraction

A Contraction is a word that is formed by shortening two or more  words and  joining them by an apostrophe.

Example:  ‘Don’t’ is a contraction of the word ‘do not’.

Derivation

Derivation is a word that is derived from within a language or from another language.

Example: Strategize (to make a plan) from strategy (a plan).

Diminutive

Diminutive is a word that is formed by adding a diminutive suffix with a word.

Example: Duckling by adding suffix link with word duck.

Function word

Function word is a word that is mainly used for expressing some grammatical relationships between other words in a sentence.

Example: (Such as preposition, or auxiliary verb) but, with, into etc.

Homograph

Homograph is a word that is same in written form (spelled alike) as another word but with a different meaning, origin, and occasionally pronounced with a different pronunciation

Example:  Bow for ship and same word bow for shooting arrows.

Homonym

Homonyms are the words that are spelled alike and have same pronunciation as another word but have a different meaning.

Example: Lead (noun) a material and lead (verb) to guide or direct.

Homophone

Homophones are the words that have same pronunciation as another word but differ in spelling, meaning, and origin.

Example: To, two, and too are homophones.

Hyponym

Hyponym is a word that has more specific meaning than another more general word of which it is an example.

Example: ‘Parrot’ is a hyponym of ‘birds’.

Legalism

Legalism is a type of word that is used in law terminology.

Example: Summon, confess, judiciary

Linker/ conjuncts

Linker or conjuncts are the words or phrase like ‘however’ or ‘what’s more’ that links what has already been written or said to what is following.

Example: however, whereas, moreover.

Loanword/ borrowed

A loanword or borrowed word is a word taken from one language to use it in another language without any change.

Example: The word pizza is taken from Italian language and used in English language

Metonym

Metonym is a word which we use to refer to something else that it is directly related to that.

Example: ‘Islamabad’ is frequently used as a metonym for the Pakistan government.

Monosyllable

Monosyllable is a word that has only one syllable.

Example: Come, go, in, yes, or no are monosyllables.

Polysyllable

Polysyllable is a word that has two or more than two syllables.

Example: Interwoven, something or language are polysyllables.

Rhyme

Rhyme is a type of word used in poetry that ends with similar sound as the other words in stanza.

Example; good, wood, should, could.

Synonym

Synonym is a word that has similar meaning as another word.

Example: ‘happiness’ is a synonym for ‘joy’.

types:

show 91 types…

hide 91 types…

anagram

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

anaphor

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

antonym, opposite, opposite word

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

back-formation

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

charade

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

cognate, cognate word

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

content word, open-class word

a word to which an independent meaning can be assigned

contraction

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

deictic, deictic word

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

derivative

(linguistics) a word that is derived from another word

diminutive

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

dirty word

a word that is considered to be unmentionable

dissyllable, disyllable

a word having two syllables

descriptor, form, signifier, word form

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

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

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

closed-class word, function word

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

catchword, guide word, guideword

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

head, head word

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

headword

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

heteronym

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

holonym, whole name

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

homonym

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

hypernym, superordinate, superordinate word

a word that is more generic than a given word

hyponym, subordinate, subordinate word

a word that is more specific than a given word

key word

a significant word used in indexing or cataloging

hybrid, loan-blend, loanblend

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

loan, loanword

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

meronym, part name

a word that names a part of a larger whole

metonym

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

monosyllabic word, monosyllable

a word or utterance of one syllable

coinage, neologism, neology

a newly invented word or phrase

hapax legomenon, nonce word

a word with a special meaning used for a special occasion

oxytone

word having stress or an acute accent on the last syllable

palindrome

a word or phrase that reads the same backward as forward

primitive

a word serving as the basis for inflected or derived forms

paroxytone

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

partitive

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

polysemant, polysemantic word, polysemous word

a word having more than one meaning

polysyllabic word, polysyllable

a word of more than three syllables

proparoxytone

word having stress or acute accent on the antepenult

quantifier

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

logical quantifier, quantifier

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

reduplication

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

retronym

a word introduced because an existing term has become inadequate

substantive

any word or group of words functioning as a noun

equivalent word, synonym

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

term

a word or expression used for some particular thing

language, nomenclature, terminology

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

trisyllable

a word having three syllables

manner name, troponym

a word that denotes a manner of doing something

spoken word, vocable

a word that is spoken aloud

classifier

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

written word

the written form of a word

syncategorem, syncategoreme

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

verbal

a noun or adjective that is formed from a verb

contronym

a word that has two contradictory or opposing meanings

blend, portmanteau, portmanteau word

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

head word, headword

a content word that can be qualified by a modifier

Latinism

a word or phrase borrowed from Latin

antigram

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

plural, plural form

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

singular, singular form

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

ghost word

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

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

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

etymon, root

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

citation form, entry word, main entry word

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

existential operator, existential quantifier

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

universal quantifier

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

jawbreaker

a word that is hard to pronounce

sesquipedalia, sesquipedalian

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

direct antonym

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

indirect antonym

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

noun

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

verb

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

modifier, qualifier

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

determinative, determiner

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

preposition

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

pronoun

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

conjunction, conjunctive, connective, continuative

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

particle

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

bigram

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

trigram

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

tetragram

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

referent

something that refers; a term that refers to another term

markup language

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

toponomy, toponymy

the nomenclature of regional anatomy

Gallicism

a word or phrase borrowed from French

abbreviation

a shortened form of a word or phrase

acronym

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

homograph

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

homophone

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