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Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Core Concepts

Lexicon

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/ˈleksɪkən/nounCommon term

In linguistics & grammar, lexicon means: All the words and meaningful word parts of a language, or the mental store of words a speaker knows, together with their meanings and how they are used.

In Turkish: sözcük varlığı, zihinsel sözlük, söz varlığı

How it is used

Linguists talk about the mental lexicon in psycholinguistics and about lexical items in grammar. Lexicon is more technical than vocabulary; in everyday use it can also mean a dictionary, especially of an ancient language.

Example sentences

  1. English borrowed a large part of its lexicon from French and Latin.

  2. Studies of the mental lexicon test how quickly people recognize real and invented words.

Common collocations

  • mental lexicon
  • lexical item
  • the English lexicon
  • lexical access
  • morphemeThe smallest part of a word that has its own meaning or grammatical job, such as un-, happy and -ness in unhappiness.
  • corpusA large, organized collection of real written or spoken texts, stored on a computer and used to study how language is actually used; the plural is corpora.
  • semanticsThe study of meaning in language: what words, phrases and sentences mean, and how their meanings relate to each other and to the world.
  • polysemyThe situation in which one word has several related meanings, such as 'head' meaning a part of the body, the leader of a group or the top of a page.

More terms: Core Concepts

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: