lexicon

lex·i·con

(lĕk'sĭ-kŏn') pronunciation

n., pl., -cons, or -ca (-kə).

A dictionary.
A stock of terms used in a particular profession, subject, or style; a vocabulary: the lexicon of surrealist art.
Linguistics. The morphemes of a language considered as a group.

[Medieval Latin, from Greek lexikon (biblion), word(book), from neuter of lexikos, of words, from lexis, word, from legein, to speak.]

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noun

An alphabetical list of words often defined or translated: dictionary, glossary, vocabulary, wordbook. See words.
Specialized expressions indigenous to a particular field, subject, trade, or subculture: argot, cant², dialect, idiom, jargon, language, lingo, patois, terminology, vernacular, vocabulary. See words.
All the words of a language: vocabulary, word-hoard. See words.

Wiley Dictionary of Flavors:

Lexicon

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A list of terms used in a vernacular. The Society of Flavor Chemists developed a flavor lexicon in the 1990s.

Random House Word Menu:

categories related to 'lexicon'

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Random House Word Menu by Stephen Glazier

For a list of words related to lexicon, see:

Publishing - lexicon: listing of words in one language
Publications - lexicon: dictionary or other vocabulary book
Curricula, Studies, Learning, and Tests - lexicon: book containing alphabetical arrangement of words and definitions
Books and Pages - lexicon: any wordbook or dictionary, esp. of an ancient language; the vocabulary of a particular field, subject, social class, or person
Linguistics and Writing Systems - lexicon: vocabulary; listing of words in a language; total stock of words in a language

Rhymes:

lexicon

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See words rhyming with "lexicon."

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Lexicon

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This article is about the linguistic concept. For other uses, see Lexicon (disambiguation).

In linguistics, the lexicon (or wordstock) of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek λεξικόν (lexicon), neuter of λεξικός (lexikos), "of or for words",^[1] from λέξις (lexis), "speech", "word",^[2] and that from λέγω (lego), "to say", "to speak".^[3]

The lexicon includes the lexemes that together form words. Lexemes are formed according to morpho-syntactic rules and express sememes. The lexicon is generally thought to be a static dictionary rather that a collection of rules. This dictionary contains both vocabulary organized in one or more ways (all the foods a person knows may be linked in a neural net, for example). The lexicon is also linked to a generative device which combine morphemes according to a language's rules. For example, the suffix "-able" can be added to transitive verbs only, so that we get "read-able" but not "cry-able".

A lexicon is usually considered to be a container for words belonging to a single language. In other words, multi-lingual speakers are generally thought to have multiple lexicons. Speakers of language variants (Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, for example) may be considered to possess a single lexicon.

When linguists study the lexicon, they study such things as what constitutes a word; the word-concept relationship; lexical access and lexical access failure; how a word's phonology, syntax, and meaning intersect; the morphology-word relationship; vocabulary structure within a given language; language use (that is, pragmatics); language acquisition; the history and evolution of words (i.e. etymology); and the relationships between words, often studied within philosophy of language.

In psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics, researchers have proposed various models of how the lexicon is organized and how words are retrieved.

References

Look up lexicon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

^ λεξικός, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
^ λέξις, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
^ λέγω, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library

v d e Lexicography

Types of reference works	Dictionary Glossary Lexicon Thesaurus

Types of dictionaries	Bilingual Biographical Conceptual Defining Electronic Encyclopedic Language for specific purposes dictionary Machine-readable Maximizing Medical Minimizing Monolingual learner's Multi-field Phonetic Picture Reverse Rhyming Rime Single-field Specialized Sub-field Visual

Lexicographic projects	Lexigraf WordNet

Other	List of lexicographers List of online dictionaries

v d e Lexicology

Major terms	Lexicon Idiolect Word Lexis Lexical unit

Elements	Morpheme Grapheme Glyphs Phoneme Sememe Seme Lexeme Lemma Meronymy Chereme

Semantic relations	Holonymy Hyponymy Troponymy Idiom Synonym Antonymy Lexical semantics Semantic net

Fonctions	Function word Headword

Fields	Morphology Controlled vocabulary English lexicology and lexicography Lexicographic error Lexicographic information cost Linguistic prescription Specialised lexicography International scientific vocabulary

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

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Translations:

Lexicon

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - leksikon, ordbog, ordforråd, ordliste

Nederlands (Dutch)
lexicon, woordenboek, taalschat

Français (French)
n. - (gén, Ling) lexique

Deutsch (German)
n. - Lexikon, Wörterbuch

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ειδικό λεξικό

Italiano (Italian)
lessico

Português (Portuguese)
n. - léxico (m)

Русский (Russian)
лексикон, словарь

Español (Spanish)
n. - léxico, lexicón, diccionario, vocabulario

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - lexikon, speciell vokabulär

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
辞典, 词典

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 辭典, 詞典

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 사전 , 사서, 어휘, 용어집, 목록

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 辞書, 語彙

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) معجم, قاموس,‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮לקסיקון, מילון, אוצר המלים של שפה, אדם מסוים, תחום-ידע וכו'‬

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		American Heritage Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Roget's Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 byHoughton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wiley Dictionary of Flavors. Copyright © 2008 by Wiley-Blackwell. Wiley and the Wiley logo are registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Used here by license. Read more
		Random House Word Menu. © 2010 Write Brothers Inc. Word Menu is a registered trademark of the Estate of Stephen Glazier. Write Brothers Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Rhymes. Oxford University Press. © 2006, 2007 All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia on Answers.com. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Lexicon. Read more
		Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more

lexicon

lex·i·con

lexicon

Lexicon

categories related to 'lexicon'

lexicon

Lexicon

See also

Further reading

References

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