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signified

signified

8.4
The idea that a word or sign shows
  • noun
  • /ˈsɪɡnɪfaɪd/
  • Specialized
translation icon : significado
  • In linguistics, the signified refers to the meaning that a word or symbol conveys.
  • signifier and signified

Examples

  • She maintains that every woman has a unique understanding of herself as belonging to a gender category and will thus attach varied signifieds to the signifier "woman."

    Academic text (1998)
  • As signifiers and signifieds are continuously taken apart, all forms of cultural life are de-totalized and transformed into objects of analytic scrutiny.

    Academic text (2003)
  • Butler acknowledges that this does not preclude the overlapping of some signifieds, yet no two women will read themselves or be read as women in precisely the same ways all the time.

    Academic text (1998)
  • The world as an inextricable tangle of signs and signifieds, or symbols and symbolized: "Any form is the perspective of another form according to a certain vanishing point and a certain distance."

    Academic text (2005)
  • On the Nicaraguan terrain, a black or moreno pride movement could prove helpful, but the sliding of signifiers and signifieds would provide it with slippery soil.

    Academic text (1991)
  • This plural phenomenon "is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds... the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language" (Barthes, 1970, p. 6).

    Academic text (1998)
  • The appearance of the third and final version shatters such expectations by first amplifying the ideological signifiers before showing that these signifiers are devoid of a frame of reference, are not linked to their signifieds, and are not a component of national history as it used to be known prior to the breach of war.

    Academic text (2017)
  • Each word in the dictionary has a specific signified that represents its meaning.

  • The relationship between signifiers and their signifieds is essential in understanding language.

Synonyms

sense
vssignified
4.1

A particular meaning of a word or expression

is about the general concept expressed rather than a single interpretation
meaning
vssignified
890 1.0

An idea a word or sign shows

is the technical notion for the underlying concept in linguistic theory
signification
vssignified
2 7.7

The meaning that a word, sign, or symbol expresses

is the cognitive concept term used especially in linguistics and semiotics

Surface Forms

signified singular
signifieds plural

Morphology

signified = signify (transparent) = sign + ify + ed

Formed by productive suffixation from 'signify' (sign + -ify) to 'signified'; the meaning 'that which is signified' follows directly from the base.

Etymology

Signified comes from the simple root sign meaning 'mark' and the verb signify meaning 'to show'. So the signified is the idea or concept that a word or sign shows, the meaning we understand.