lexeme
- noun
- /ˈlɛksim/
- Specialized
- (Aside from some lexemes like "wooden" or "metallic," this is what you'd use to say, e.g., ador nigwinoon, "a stone chair" or "a chair made out of stone.")
Examples
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Understanding a lexeme is essential for analyzing the structure of a language.
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Later, the formula increasingly uses lexemes of return rather than progress (we now return; I must go back).
Academic text (2003) -
Finally, Jud, who believed that autumare was primarily a legal term, adduced several other Latin lexemes belonging to that same semantic sphere that had survived exclusively in Hispano-Romance.
Academic text (2000) -
For Monika Fludernik, "mere repetition is very difficult to handle," and "the choice of repeating a lexeme rather than using the pronominal anaphor remains somewhat of a puzzle" (139).
Academic text (2005) -
In linguistics, a lexeme can refer to variations of a word such as 'run,' 'running,' and 'ran.'
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The dictionary provides information about each lexeme and its meanings.
Surface Forms
Etymology
Lexeme comes from the Greek lexis, meaning 'word', and the ending -eme, meaning 'unit' (as in phoneme). So a lexeme is the basic 'word' unit that covers all forms like 'run', 'runs', 'ran', and 'running'.