What's in a Word?

Abstract

Words are all around us to the point that their complexity is lost in familiarity. The term “word” itself can ambiguously refer to different linguistic concepts: orthographic words, phonological words, grammatical words, word-forms, lexemes, and to an extent lexical items. While it is hard to come up with exception-less criteria for wordhood, some typical properties are that words are writeable and spellable, consist of morphemes, are syntactic units, carry meaning, and interrelate with other words. Moreover, words can be classified and categorized in a number of different ways depending on how they are used, by whom, and to what extent they are established within the lexicon. English has many ways of adding new words to its repertoire through both productive and creative means. “Knowing” a word need not entail knowing every facet of its history and usage, yet there is still more to a word than simply the symbol-to-meaning relation.