2. Greek for…
A lexicon is…
Lexicology is the study of…
A lexicographer is someone who chooses to
write a…
3. Greek for word
A lexicon is the body of words/word parts
belonging to a language
Lexicology is the study of words, their
meanings, their uses and their connections.
A lexicographer is someone who chooses to
write a dictionary.
4. Sometimes you want to describe a unit of
meaning which contains more than one word,
eg. ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ or ‘come in’.
Sometimes you need to look at a word and
its associated forms.
If you came across the phrase ‘It was
fibrillating’ and needed to know what it
meant, what word would you look up in the
dictionary?
5. So instead we use ‘lexeme’ or ‘lexical unit’.
A lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning.
More examples of lexemes:
elephant
jog
cholesterol
happiness
put up with
face the music
etc.
6. What goes in?
Historical words?
American English terms?
English words used in other countries eg.
India, Nigeria?
Spoken vocabulary? Slang?
Abbreviations?
The million or so insects we have named?
Proper nouns?
7. How many words do you think you know?
Some guesses suggest 10,000-12,000 for a
school leaver, 20,000-25,000 for a university
graduate.
There is also the question of your passive vs.
your active vocabulary.
8. Known words:
Know well
Know vaguely
Don’t know
Used words
Use a lot
Use occasionally
Don’t use
9.
10. A good vocabulary isn’t all about knowing
long words.
There are 18 four letter words containing the
letter Q listed by the Scrabble dictionary.
How many could you name?
How many people in the world do you think
there are who could name them all?
