Lexicologists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Experts who study words, their origins, structure and meanings, and how language is organized as a system
2. Specialists in the science of vocabulary, examining how words are formed, related and given their significance
3. People who research the lexicon of a language, tracing word histories and analyzing how their meanings develop

Etymology: "Lexicologists" is the plural of "lexicologist," a person who studies the vocabulary of a language. The root goes back to ancient Greek, where "léxis" meant "a saying, speech, word," and it came from "légein," "to speak." From that verb came the adjective "lexikós," meaning "of words," which gave later scholars the prefix "lexico-." Add the Greek "-logos" suffix, meaning the study of something, and the result is a term built from ancient parts but assembled much later. The sense of "lexikós" as "of words" was what made it useful for the study of vocabulary. Because the element is Greek rather than inherited from English, the word belongs to the same family of learned terms as "lexicon," the dictionary or stock of words in a language, which uses the same Greek root. Lexicologists therefore share their ancestry with the dictionary makers, though their work concerns the structure, meaning, and history of words rather than the compiling of entries.

Synonyms: lexicographers