Sememes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The smallest unit of meaning within a word, as distinguished from the sound or form that expresses it
2. In linguistic theory, an indivisible element of meaning that combines with others to build the full sense of a word
3. A basic component of semantic content that linguists identify as the building block of a word's overall meaning

Etymology: "Sememes" is the plural of "sememe", a term for the smallest unit of meaning in a language, in the same way a morpheme is the smallest unit of form. The plural is simply the regular English "-s" ending added to the singular. The singular was built from Ancient Greek "sēmaínō", meaning "I signify" or "I mean", with the ending "-eme" attached on the model of "morpheme". The "-eme" element comes from the linguistic habit of creating words ending in "-eme" for units of a particular kind, such as "phoneme" for a unit of sound. So the term is a modern coinage assembled from classical material, not a word the Greeks themselves used. Its root is the same Greek verb that gave English words like "semantic" and "semantics", the study of meaning.

Synonyms: meaning