- Types:
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anagram
a word or phrase spelled by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase
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anaphor
a word (such as a pronoun) used to avoid repetition; the referent of an anaphor is determined by its antecedent
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antonym, opposite, opposite word
a word that expresses a meaning opposed to the meaning of another word, in which case the two words are antonyms of each other
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back-formation
a word invented (usually unwittingly by subtracting an affix) on the assumption that a familiar word derives from it
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charade
a word acted out in an episode of the game of charades
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cognate, cognate word
a word is cognate with another if both derive from the same word in an ancestral language
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content word, open-class word
a word to which an independent meaning can be assigned
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contraction
a word formed from two or more words by omitting or combining some sounds
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deictic, deictic word
a word specifying identity or spatial or temporal location from the perspective of a speaker or hearer in the context in which the communication occurs
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derivative
(linguistics) a word that is derived from another word
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diminutive
a word that is formed with a suffix (such as -let or -kin) to indicate smallness
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dirty word
a word that is considered to be unmentionable
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dissyllable, disyllable
a word having two syllables
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descriptor, form, signifier, word form
the phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of a word that can be used to describe or identify something
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four-letter Anglo-Saxon word, four-letter word
any of several short English words (often having 4 letters) generally regarded as obscene or offensive
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closed-class word, function word
a word that is uninflected and serves a grammatical function but has little identifiable meaning
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catchword, guide word, guideword
a word printed at the top of the page of a dictionary or other reference book to indicate the first or last item on that page
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head, head word
(grammar) the word in a grammatical constituent that plays the same grammatical role as the whole constituent
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headword
a word placed at the beginning of a line or paragraph (as in a dictionary entry)
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heteronym
two words are heteronyms if they are spelled the same way but differ in pronunciation
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holonym, whole name
a word that names the whole of which a given word is a part
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homonym
two words are homonyms if they are pronounced or spelled the same way but have different meanings
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hypernym, superordinate, superordinate word
a word that is more generic than a given word
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hyponym, subordinate, subordinate word
a word that is more specific than a given word
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key word
a significant word used in indexing or cataloging
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hybrid, loan-blend, loanblend
a word that is composed of parts from different languages (e.g., `monolingual' has a Greek prefix and a Latin root)
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loan, loanword
a word borrowed from another language; e.g. `blitz' is a German word borrowed into modern English
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meronym, part name
a word that names a part of a larger whole
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metonym
a word that denotes one thing but refers to a related thing
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monosyllabic word, monosyllable
a word or utterance of one syllable
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coinage, neologism, neology
a newly invented word or phrase
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hapax legomenon, nonce word
a word with a special meaning used for a special occasion
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oxytone
word having stress or an acute accent on the last syllable
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palindrome
a word or phrase that reads the same backward as forward
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primitive
a word serving as the basis for inflected or derived forms
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paroxytone
word having stress or acute accent on the next to last syllable
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partitive
word (such a `some' or `less') that is used to indicate a part as distinct from a whole
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polysemant, polysemantic word, polysemous word
a word having more than one meaning
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polysyllabic word, polysyllable
a word of more than three syllables
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proparoxytone
word having stress or acute accent on the antepenult
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quantifier
(grammar) a word that expresses a quantity (as `fifteen' or `many')
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logical quantifier, quantifier
(logic) a word (such as `some' or `all' or `no') that binds the variables in a logical proposition
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reduplication
a word formed by or containing a repeated syllable or speech sound (usually at the beginning of the word)
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retronym
a word introduced because an existing term has become inadequate
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substantive
any word or group of words functioning as a noun
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equivalent word, synonym
two words that can be interchanged in a context are said to be synonymous relative to that context
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term
a word or expression used for some particular thing
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language, nomenclature, terminology
a system of words used to name things in a particular discipline
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trisyllable
a word having three syllables
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manner name, troponym
a word that denotes a manner of doing something
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spoken word, vocable
a word that is spoken aloud
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classifier
a word or morpheme used in some languages in certain contexts (such as counting) to indicate the semantic class to which the counted item belongs
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written word
the written form of a word
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syncategorem, syncategoreme
a syncategorematic expression; a word that cannot be used alone as a term in a logical proposition
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blend, portmanteau, portmanteau word
a new word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings
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head word, headword
a content word that can be qualified by a modifier
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Latinism
a word or phrase borrowed from Latin
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antigram
an anagram that means the opposite of the original word or phrase
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plural, plural form
the form of a word that is used to denote more than one
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singular, singular form
the form of a word that is used to denote a singleton
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ghost word
a word form that has entered the language through the perpetuation of an error
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base, radical, root, root word, stem, theme
(linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed
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etymon, root
a simple form inferred as the common basis from which related words in several languages can be derived by linguistic processes
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citation form, entry word, main entry word
the form of a word that heads a lexical entry and is alphabetized in a dictionary
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existential operator, existential quantifier
a logical quantifier of a proposition that asserts the existence of at least one thing for which the proposition is true
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universal quantifier
a logical quantifier of a proposition that asserts that the proposition is true for all members of a class of things
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jawbreaker
a word that is hard to pronounce
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sesquipedalia, sesquipedalian
a very long word (a foot and a half long)
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direct antonym
antonyms that are commonly associated (e.g., `wet' and `dry')
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indirect antonym
antonyms whose opposition is mediated (e.g., the antonymy of `wet' and `parched' is mediated by the similarity of `parched' to `dry')
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noun
a content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action
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verb
a content word that denotes an action, occurrence, or state of existence
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modifier, qualifier
a content word that qualifies the meaning of a noun or verb
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determinative, determiner
one of a limited class of noun modifiers that determine the referents of noun phrases
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preposition
a function word that combines with a noun or pronoun or noun phrase to form a prepositional phrase that can have an adverbial or adjectival relation to some other word
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pronoun
a function word that is used in place of a noun or noun phrase
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conjunction, conjunctive, connective, continuative
an uninflected function word that serves to conjoin words or phrases or clauses or sentences
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particle
a function word that can be used in English to form phrasal verbs
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bigram
a word that is written with two letters in an alphabetic writing system
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trigram
a word that is written with three letters in an alphabetic writing system
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tetragram
a word that is written with four letters in an alphabetic writing system
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referent
something that refers; a term that refers to another term
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markup language
a set of symbols and rules for their use when doing a markup of a document
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toponomy, toponymy
the nomenclature of regional anatomy
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Gallicism
a word or phrase borrowed from French
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abbreviation
a shortened form of a word or phrase
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acronym
a word formed from the initial letters of the several words in the name
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homograph
two words are homographs if they are spelled the same way but differ in meaning (e.g. fair)
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homophone
two words are homophones if they are pronounced the same way but differ in meaning or spelling or both (e.g. bare and bear)
