lexeme
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lexeme
- /ˈlɛkˌsiːm/
Where it comes from
From Latin lexis, from Ancient Greek λέξις (léxis, “word”) + -eme, a suffix indicating a fundamental unit in some aspect of linguistic structure, on the model of phoneme.
noun lexemes
-
The abstract minimum unit of language or meaning that underlies such a set.
A lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning, which exists regardless of any inflectional endings it may have or the number of words it may contain. Thus, fibrillate, rain cats and dogs, and come in are all lexemes, as are elephant, jog, cholesterol, happiness, put up with, face the music, and hundreds of
Similar: lexical item, semanteme
- The set itself; a lexemic family.
-
The wordform chosen to represent such a set or family.
For the second sense, where “word” means “item that should have its own dictionary entry,” lexicographers sometimes use the term “lemma,” but that has other meanings too, so among linguists the term lexeme is now standard, and I’ll use it. For the different forms or shapes that belong to a lexeme we
Similar: base form, basic form, canonical form, citation form, dictionary form, headword, lemma
-
An individual instance of a continuous character sequence without spaces, used in lexical analysis.
Near-synonym: token
Similar: token
Translations
Every language
noun linguistics: unit of vocabulary, set of different forms of the same lemma
| Español | lexema |
|---|---|
| 한국어 | 어휘소 eohwiso |
| 日本語 | 語彙素 goiso |
| 中文 | 詞位 /词位 cíwèi, 詞彙單位 /词汇单位 cíhuì dānwèi, 詞 /词 cí, 詞素 /词素 císù |
| हिन्दी | शब्दिम śabdim |
| Kiswahili | leksimu |
| Português | lexema, semantema |
| Français | lexème |
| Deutsch | Lexem |
| Italiano | lessema |
| Ελληνικά | λέξημα léxima |
| Română | lexem |
| Русский | лексе́ма lekséma |
| Tiếng Việt | từ vị |
| العربية | لِكْسِيم liksīm, مُفْرَدَة mufrada |
Talk about this word "lexeme." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/lexeme. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. lexeme. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/lexeme "lexeme." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/lexeme.Cite this
@misc{lexeme_2026,
title = {lexeme},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/lexeme},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
