lexical
adjective
Simple meaning
Related to the words that are spoken.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
lehksihkuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈlɛksɪkəl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
linguistics
Of or relating to words
linguistics
Concerning the vocabulary, words, sentences or morphemes of a language.
linguistics
Concerning lexicography or a lexicon or dictionary.
Of or relating to dictionaries
linguistics
Denoting a content word as opposed to a function word.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Of or relating to words
Used this way, lexical is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a grammar or language-study use: it describes how language works, so it appears in teaching and reference writing.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Academic writing
- Education/classroom
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use lexical
- “Lexical decision task.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Disambiguation of the sense of a polysemantic word.
The entry in a dictionary of information about a word.
The meaning of a content word that depends on the nonlinguistic concepts it is used to express.
The branch of semantics that studies the meanings and relations of words.
A database of information about words.
The ambiguity of an individual word or phrase that can be used (in different contexts) to express two or more different meanings.
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.