Lemmata

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈlɛ.mə.tə/

Definitions

1. A set of the base forms or entries of words in a language serving as a guiding reference point for dictionary listings
2. The plural form of a lemma, indicating the canonical or dictionary-style representations of words or phrases
3. Referring to the headwords under which meanings and grammatical details of words are organized in lexicographic works

Etymology: "Lemmata" is the plural of "lemma," and the Greek it comes from, "lḗmmătă," is the plural of "lêmma," meaning something taken or received, from the verb "lambanein," to take. The Greeks used the word for a premise or assumption taken as a starting point in an argument, so the core idea was of something grasped in advance and relied upon. English borrowed the Greek plural directly, as a learned term, rather than adapting it to a regular English plural. Over time the sense narrowed in lexicography, where the word now names the entries that a dictionary arranges alphabetically and under which everything else about a word is gathered. The shift from "assumption taken as a premise" to "headword in a reference book" is a case of a term moving from logic into scholarship, but the underlying notion of a base form from which other information is taken still holds.