Lexeme

Pronunciation

• enPR: lÄ•ks'Ä“m IPA: /ˈlÉ›ksiːm/

Origin

From Latin lexis, from Ancient Greek λέξις (léxis, "word") + -eme a suffix indicating a fundamental unit in some aspect of linguistic structure. Extracted from phoneme, from Ancient Greek φώνημα (phōnēma, "sound"), from φωνέω (phōneō, "to sound"), from φωνή (phōnē, "sound").

Full definition of lexeme

Noun

1. (linguistics) Roughly, the set of inflected forms taken by a single word, such as the lexeme RUN including as members "run" (lemma), "running" (inflected form), or "ran", and excluding "runner" (derived term).
2. (computing) an individual instance of a continuous character sequence without spaces, used in lexical analysis (see token)

Usage notes

Ran, run, runs, and running are variations of the English lexeme run; whereas runner and runners aren’t: they are forms of the lexeme runner.

Both hypodermic and dermatologist contain the morpheme derm, which is a root form referring to “skin”. This is not a lexeme, though.

Derived terms

• lexical
• lexemic