View source for Word

{{Short description|Basic element of language}}
{{about|the unit of speech and writing|the computer software|Microsoft Word|other uses}}
[[File:NZs-longest-place-name.jpg|upright=1.5|thumb|Sign of a [[New Zealand]] hill with an unusually long one-word name: [[Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu|{{shy|Taumata|whakatangihanga|koauau|o|tamatea|turi|pukaka|piki|maunga|horo|nuku|pokai|whenua|ki|tana|tahu}}]] (85 [[Character (symbol)|characters]])]]
{{Linguistics}}

A '''word''' is a basic element of [[language]] that carries [[semantics|meaning]], can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible.<ref name=CDL>{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=E. K. |title=The Cambridge dictionary of linguistics |date=2013 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |others=J. E. Miller |isbn=978-0-521-76675-3 |location=Cambridge |oclc=801681536|page=473}}</ref> Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among [[linguistics|linguists]] on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial.<ref name=RDLL>{{Cite book |last=Bussmann |first=Hadumod |title=Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics |date=1998 |publisher=Routledge |others=Gregory Trauth, Kerstin Kazzazi |isbn=0-415-02225-8 |location=London |oclc=41252822 |page=1285}}</ref> Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition.<ref name=Brown2005>{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Keith |title=Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics: V1-14 |date=2005 |others=Keith Brown |isbn=1-322-06910-7 |edition=2nd |oclc=1097103078}}</ref>{{rp|13:618}} Some specific definitions of the term "word" are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on [[phonology|phonological]], [[grammar|grammatical]] or [[orthography|orthographic]] basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations.<ref name=WACLT>{{Cite book |title=Word: a cross-linguistic typology |date=2002 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |others=Robert M. W. Dixon, A. Y. Aikhenvald |isbn=0-511-06149-8 |location=Cambridge |oclc=57123416}}</ref>{{rp|6}}

The concept of "word" is distinguished from that of a [[morpheme]], which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own.<ref name=CDL/> Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can also be joined to create other words in a process of [[morphological derivation]].{{r|RDLL|p=768}} In English and many other languages, the morphemes that make up a word generally include at least one [[root (linguistics)|root]] (such as "rock", "god", "type", "writ", "can", "not") and possibly some [[affix]]es ("-s", "un-", "-ly", "-ness"). Words with more than one root ("[type][writ]er", "[cow][boy]s", "[tele][graph]ically") are called [[compound (linguistics)|compound words]]. [[Contraction (grammar)|Contractions]] ("can't", "would've") are words formed from multiple words made into one. In turn, words are combined to form other elements of language, such as [[phrase]]s ("a red rock", "put up with"), [[clause]]s ("I threw a rock"), and [[sentence (linguistics)|sentences]] ("I threw a rock, but missed").

In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a "word" may be learned as part of learning the writing system.<ref name=Haspelmath2011>{{Cite journal |last=Haspelmath |first=Martin |date=2011 |title=The indeterminacy of word segmentation and the nature of morphology and syntax |url=https://zenodo.org/record/225844 |journal=Folia Linguistica |volume=45 |issue=1 |doi=10.1515/flin.2011.002 |s2cid=62789916 |issn=0165-4004}}</ref> This is the case for the [[English language]], and for most languages that are written with alphabets derived from the ancient [[Latin alphabet|Latin]] or [[Greek alphabet]]s. In [[English orthography]], the letter sequences "rock", "god", "write", "with", "the", and "not" are considered to be single-morpheme words, whereas "rocks", "ungodliness", "typewriter", and "cannot" are words composed of two or more morphemes ("rock"+"s", "un"+"god"+"li"+"ness", "type"+"writ"+"er", and "can"+"not").

==Definitions==
Since the beginning of the study of linguistics, numerous attempts at defining what a word is have been made, with many different criteria.<ref name=Haspelmath2011/> However, no satisfying definition has yet been found to apply to all languages and at all levels of linguistic analysis. It is, however, possible to find consistent definitions of "word" at different levels of description.{{r|WACLT|p=6}} These include definitions on the [[phonetics|phonetic]] and [[phonology|phonological]] level, that it is the smallest segment of sound that can be theoretically isolated by word accent and boundary markers; on the [[orthography|orthographic]] level as a segment indicated by blank spaces in writing or [[Printing|print]]; on the basis of [[Morphology (linguistics)|morphology]] as the basic element of [[grammar|grammatical]] paradigms like [[inflection]], different from word-forms; within [[semantics]] as the smallest and relatively independent carrier of meaning in a lexicon; and [[syntax|syntactically]], as the smallest permutable and substitutable unit of a sentence.{{r|RDLL|p=1285}}

In some languages, these different types of words coincide and one can analyze, for example, a "phonological word" as essentially the same as "grammatical word". However, in other languages they may correspond to elements of different size.{{r|WACLT|p=1}} Because of this unclear status, some linguists propose avoiding the term "word" altogether, instead focusing on better defined terms such as [[morpheme]]s.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harris |first=Zellig S. |date=1946 |title=From morpheme to utterance |journal=Language |volume=22 |issue=3 |pages=161–183|doi=10.2307/410205 |jstor=410205 }}</ref>

[[Dictionaries]] categorize a language's lexicon into individually listed forms called [[Lemma (morphology)|lemmas]]. These can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a "word" in the opinion of the writers of that language. This written form of a word constitutes a [[lexeme]].{{r|RDLL|p=670-671}} The most appropriate means of measuring the length of a word is by counting its [[syllable]]s or morphemes.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Oxford handbook of the word |date=2015 |editor=John R. Taylor |isbn=978-0-19-175669-6 |edition=1st |location=Oxford, United Kingdom |oclc=945582776 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref> When a word has multiple definitions or multiple senses, it may result in confusion in a debate or discussion.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Chodorow |first1=Martin S. |last2=Byrd |first2=Roy J. |last3=Heidorn |first3=George E. |date=1985 |title=Extracting semantic hierarchies from a large on-line dictionary |url=http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=981210.981247 |journal=Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics |language=en |location=Chicago, Illinois |publisher=Association for Computational Linguistics |pages=299–304 |doi=10.3115/981210.981247|s2cid=657749 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

===Phonology===
One distinguishable meaning of the term "word" can be defined on phonological grounds. It is a unit larger or equal to a syllable, which can be distinguished based on segmental or [[Prosody (linguistics)|prosodic]] features, or through its interactions with phonological rules. In [[Walmajarri language|Walmatjari]], an Australian language, roots or suffixes may have only one syllable but a phonologic word must have at least two syllables. A disyllabic verb root may take a zero suffix, e.g. {{lang|wmt|luwa-ø}} 'hit!', but a monosyllabic root must take a suffix, e.g. {{lang|wmt|ya-nta}} 'go!', thus conforming to a segmental pattern of Walmatjari words. In the [[Pitjantjatjara dialect]] of the [[Wati language]], another language from Australia, a word-medial syllable can end with a consonant but a word-final syllable must end with a vowel.{{r|WACLT|p=14}}

In most languages, [[Stress (linguistics)|stress]] may serve a criterion for a phonological word. In languages with a fixed stress, it is possible to ascertain word boundaries from its location.{{r|WACLT|p=16}}

Many phonological rules operate only within a phonological word or specifically across word boundaries. In [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]], dental consonants /d/, /t/, /l/ or /n/ assimilate to a following semi-vowel /j/, yielding the corresponding palatal sound, but only within one word. Conversely, external [[sandhi]] rules act across word boundaries. The prototypical example of this rule comes from [[Sanskrit]]; however, initial [[consonant mutation]] in contemporary [[Celtic languages]] or the [[linking r]] phenomenon in some [[Rhoticity in English|non-rhotic]] English dialects can also be used to illustrate word boundaries.{{r|WACLT|p=17}}

It is often the case that a phonological word does not correspond to our intuitive conception of a word. The [[Finnish language|Finnish]] compound word {{lang|fi|pääkaupunki}} 'capital' is phonologically two words ({{lang|fi|pää}} 'head' and {{lang|fi|kaupunki}} 'city') because it does not conform to Finnish patterns of [[vowel harmony]] within words. Conversely, a single phonological word may be made up of more than one syntactical elements, such as in the English phrase ''I'll come'', where ''I'll'' forms one phonological word.{{r|Brown2005|p=13:618}}

===Lexemes===
A word can be thought of as an item in a speaker's internal lexicon; this is called a [[lexeme]]. However, this may be different from the meaning in everyday speech of "word", since one lexeme includes all inflected forms. The lexeme {{Smallcaps|teapot}} refers to the singular ''teapot'' as well as the plural ''teapots''. There is also the question to what extent should inflected or compounded words be included in a lexeme, especially in agglutinative languages. For example, there is little doubt that in [[Turkish language|Turkish]] the lexeme for {{Smallcaps|house}} should include nominative singular ''ev'' and plural ''evler''. However, it is not clear if it should also encompass the word ''evlerinizden'' 'from your houses', formed through regular suffixation. There are also lexemes such as "black and white" or "do-it-yourself", which, although consisting of multiple words, still form a single collocation with a set meaning.{{r|Brown2005|p=13:618}}

===Grammar===
Grammatical words are proposed to consist of a number of grammatical elements which occur together (not in separate places within a clause) in a fixed order and have a set meaning. However, there are exceptions to all of these criteria.{{r|WACLT|p=19}}

Single grammatical words have a fixed internal structure; when the structure is changed, the meaning of the word also changes. In [[Dyirbal language|Dyirbal]], which can use many derivational affixes with its nouns, there are the dual suffix ''-jarran'' and the suffix ''-gabun'' meaning "another". With the noun ''yibi'' they can be arranged into ''yibi-jarran-gabun'' ("another two women") or ''yibi-gabun-jarran'' ("two other women") but changing the suffix order also changes their meaning. Speakers of a language also usually associate a specific meaning with a word and not a single morpheme. For example, when asked to talk about ''untruthfulness'' they rarely focus on the meaning of morphemes such as ''-th'' or ''-ness''.{{r|WACLT|p=19–20}}

===Semantics===
[[Leonard Bloomfield]] introduced the concept of "Minimal Free Forms" in 1928. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of [[speech]] that can stand by themselves.<ref name=Katamba2005>{{Cite book |last=Katamba |first=Francis |title=English words: structure, history, usage |date=2005 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-29892-X |edition=2nd |location=London |oclc=54001244}}</ref>{{rp|11}} This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to [[lexeme]]s (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense by themselves (for example, ''the'' and ''of'').<ref name=Fleming2003>{{Cite book |last1=Fleming |first1=Michael |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134568512 |title=Meeting the Standards in Secondary English |last2=Hardman |first2=Frank |last3=Stevens |first3=David |last4=Williamson |first4=John |date=2003-09-02 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-56851-2 |edition=1st |language=en |doi=10.4324/9780203165553}}</ref>{{rp|77}} Some semanticists have put forward a theory of so-called semantic primitives or [[semantic primes]], indefinable words representing fundamental concepts that are intuitively meaningful. According to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their associated conceptual denotations.<ref name=Wierzbicka1996>{{Cite book |last=Wierzbicka |first=Anna |title=Semantics : primes and universals |date=1996 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-870002-4 |location=Oxford [England] |oclc=33012927}}</ref><ref name=Goddard2002>{{Cite book |title=Meaning and universal grammar. Volume II: theory and empirical findings |chapter=The search for the shared semantic core of all languages. |date=2002 |publisher=John Benjamins Pub. Co |others=Cliff Goddard, Anna Wierzbicka |isbn=1-58811-264-0 |location=Amsterdam |oclc=752499720}}</ref>

===Features===
In the [[Minimalist program|Minimalist]] school of [[theoretical syntax]], words (also called ''lexical items'' in the literature) are construed as "bundles" of [[feature (linguistics)|linguistic features]] that are united into a structure with form and meaning.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Adger |first=David |title=Core syntax: a minimalist approach |date=2003 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-924370-0 |location=Oxford |oclc=50768042}}</ref>{{rp|36–37}} For example, the word "koalas" has semantic features (it denotes real-world objects, [[koala]]s), [[Lexical category|category]] features (it is a noun), [[Grammatical number|number]] features (it is plural and must agree with verbs, pronouns, and demonstratives in its domain), [[phonology|phonological]] features (it is pronounced a certain way), etc.

===Orthography===
[[File:Happy Valentines Day.jpg|thumbnail|Words made out of letters, divided by spaces]]
In languages with a [[writing|literary tradition]], the question of what is considered a single word is influenced by [[orthography]]. [[Word separator]]s, typically [[space (punctuation)|spaces]] and [[punctuation mark]]s are common in modern orthography of languages using [[alphabetic script]]s, but these are a relatively modern development in the [[history of writing]]. In [[character encoding]], [[text segmentation#Word segmentation|word segmentation]] depends on which [[character (computing)|characters]] are defined as word dividers. In [[English orthography]], [[compound (linguistics)|compound expressions]] may contain spaces. For example, ''ice cream'', ''air raid shelter'' and ''get up'' each are generally considered to consist of more than one word (as each of the components are free forms, with the possible exception of ''get''), and so is ''no one'', but the similarly compounded ''someone'' and ''nobody'' are considered single words.

Sometimes, languages which are close grammatically will consider the same order of words in different ways. For example, [[reflexive verb]]s in the [[French language|French]] infinitive are separate from their respective particle, e.g. ''se laver'' ("to wash oneself"), whereas in [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]] they are hyphenated, e.g. ''lavar-se'', and in [[Spanish language|Spanish]] they are joined, e.g. ''lavarse''.{{efn|The convention also depends on the tense or mood—the examples given here are in the infinitive, whereas French imperatives, for example, are hyphenated, e.g. ''lavez-vous'', whereas the Spanish present tense is completely separate, e.g. ''me lavo''.}}

Not all languages delimit words expressly. [[Mandarin Chinese]] is a highly [[analytic language]] with few inflectional affixes, making it unnecessary to delimit words orthographically. However, there are many multiple-morpheme compounds in Mandarin, as well as a variety of bound morphemes that make it difficult to clearly determine what constitutes a word.<ref name=Fasold2006>{{Cite book |last1= Fasold |first1= Ralph W.|title=An introduction to language and linguistics |last2= Connor-Linton |first2=Jeff|date=2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-84768-1 |location=Cambridge, UK |oclc=62532880}}</ref>{{rp|56}} [[Japanese language|Japanese]] uses orthographic cues to delimit words, such as switching between [[kanji]] (characters borrowed from Chinese writing) and the two [[kana]] syllabaries. This is a fairly soft rule, because [[content word]]s can also be written in [[hiragana]] for effect, though if done extensively spaces are typically added to maintain legibility. [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]] orthography, although using the [[Latin alphabet]], delimits monosyllabic morphemes rather than words.

==Word boundaries==
The task of defining what constitutes a word involves determining where one word ends and another begins. There are several methods for identifying word boundaries present in speech:<ref name=Haspelmath2011/>
* '''Potential pause''': A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries. However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words, or fail to separate two or more closely linked words (e.g. "to a" in "He went to a house").
* '''Indivisibility''': A speaker is told to say a [[Sentence (linguistics)|sentence]] out loud, and then is told to say the sentence again with extra words added to it. Thus, "I have lived in this village for ten years." might become "My family and I have lived in this little village for about ten or so years." These extra words will tend to be added in the word boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have [[infix]]es, which are put inside a root. Similarly, some have [[separable affix]]es: in the [[German language|German]] sentence {{lang|de|Ich '''komme''' gut zu Hause '''an'''}}, the verb {{lang|de|ankommen}} is separated.
* '''Phonetic boundaries''': Some languages have particular rules of [[pronunciation]] that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be. For example, in a language that regularly [[lexical stress|stresses]] the last syllable of a word, a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable. Another example can be seen in a language that has [[vowel harmony]] (like [[Turkish language|Turkish]]):<ref name=Bauer1983>{{Cite book |last=Bauer |first=Laurie |title=English word-formation |date=1983 |isbn=0-521-24167-7 |location=Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] |oclc=8728300}}</ref>{{rp|9}} the vowels within a given word share the same <em>quality</em>, so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. Nevertheless, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions.
* '''Orthographic boundaries''': Word separators, such as [[space (punctuation)|spaces]] and [[punctuation mark]]s can be used to distinguish single words. However, this depends on a specific language. East Asian writing systems often do not separate their characters. This is the case with [[Written Chinese|Chinese]], [[Japanese writing]], which use [[logographic]] characters, as well as [[Thai script|Thai]] and [[Lao script|Lao]], which are [[abugida]]s.

==Morphology==
{{main|Morphology (linguistics)}}
[[File:Independently morphology tree.png|thumbnail|A morphology tree of the English word "independently"]]

Morphology is the study of [[word formation]] and structure. Words may undergo different morphological processes which are traditionally classified into two broad groups: [[Morphological derivation|derivation]] and [[inflection]]. Derivation is a process in which a new word is created from existing ones, with an adjustment to its meaning and often with a change of word class. For example, in English the verb ''to convert'' may be modified into the noun ''a convert'' through stress shift and into the adjective ''convertible'' through affixation. Inflection adds grammatical information to a word, such as indicating case, tense, or gender.{{r|Fasold2006|p=73}}

In [[synthetic language]]s, a single [[word stem]] (for example, ''love'') may inflect to have a number of different forms (for example, ''loves'', ''loving'', and ''loved''). However, for some purposes these are not usually considered to be different words, but rather different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of [[morpheme]]s.

In [[Indo-European languages]] in particular, the morphemes distinguished are:
* the [[root (linguistics)|root]]
* multiple possible [[adfix]]es
* an inflectional [[suffix]].
Thus, the Proto-Indo-European {{lang|ine-x-proto|*wr̥dhom}} would be analyzed as consisting of
# {{lang|ine-x-proto|*wr̥-}}, the [[zero grade]] of the root {{lang|ine-x-proto|*wer-}}.
# A root-extension {{lang|ine-x-proto|*-dh-}} (diachronically a suffix), resulting in a complex root {{lang|ine-x-proto|*wr̥dh-}}.
# The [[thematic suffix]] {{lang|ine-x-proto|*-o-}}.
# The [[neuter gender]] nominative or accusative singular suffix {{lang|ine-x-proto|*-m}}.

==Philosophy==
Philosophers have found words to be objects of fascination since at least the 5th century BC, with the foundation of the [[philosophy of language]]. [[Plato]] analyzed words in terms of their origins and the sounds making them up, concluding that there was some connection between sound and meaning, though words change a great deal over time. [[John Locke]] wrote that the use of words "is to be sensible marks of ideas", though they are chosen "not by any natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of such an idea".<ref name=Locke1690>{{Cite book |last=Locke |first=John |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Essay_Concerning_Human_Understanding/Book_III#Chapter_II:_Of_the_Signification_of_Words |title=An Essay Concerning Human Understanding |publisher=Thomas Basset |year=1690 |edition=1st |volume=III |location=London |language=en |chapter=Chapter II: Of the Signification of Words}}</ref> [[Wittgenstein]]'s thought transitioned from a word as representation of meaning to "the meaning of a word is its use in the language."<ref name="Biletzki2021">{{Cite book |last1=Biletzki |first1=Anar |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/wittgenstein/ |title=Ludwig Wittgenstein |last2=Matar |first2=Anat |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |year=2021 |edition=Winter 2021 |language=en}}</ref>

==Classes==
{{main|Lexical category}}
Each word belongs to a category, based on shared [[grammar|grammatical]] properties. Typically, a language's lexicon may be classified into several such groups of words. The total number of categories as well as their types are not universal and vary among languages. For example, English has a group of words called [[Article (grammar)|articles]], such as ''the'' (the definite article) or ''a'' (the indefinite article), which mark definiteness or identifiability. This class is not present in Japanese, which depends on context to indicate this difference. On the other hand, Japanese has a class of words called [[Grammatical particle|particles]] which are used to mark noun phrases according to their grammatical function or thematic relation, which English marks using word order or prosody.<ref name=Akmajian2010>{{Cite book |last=Akmajian |first=Adrian |title=Linguistics: an introduction to language and communication |date=2010 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-01375-8 |edition=6th |location=Cambridge, Mass. |oclc=424454992}}</ref>{{rp|21–24}}

It is not clear if any categories other than interjection are universal parts of human language. The basic bipartite division that is ubiquitous in [[natural language]]s is that of [[noun]]s vs [[verb]]s. However, in some [[Wakashan languages|Wakashan]] and [[Salish languages]], all content words may be understood as verbal in nature. In [[Lushootseed language|Lushootseed]], a Salish language, all words with 'noun-like' meanings can be used predicatively, where they function like verb. For example, the word ''sbiaw'' can be understood as '(is a) coyote' rather than simply 'coyote'.<ref>{{Citation |last=Beck |first=David |title=Unidirectional flexibility and the noun–verb distinction in Lushootseed |date=2013-08-29 |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/26032/chapter/193935978 |work=Flexible Word Classes |pages=185–220 |editor-last=Rijkhoff |editor-first=Jan |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668441.003.0007 |isbn=978-0-19-966844-1 |access-date=2022-08-25 |editor2-last=van Lier |editor2-first=Eva}}</ref>{{r|Brown2005|p=13:631}} On the other hand, in [[Eskimo–Aleut languages]] all content words can be analyzed as nominal, with agentive nouns serving the role closest to verbs. Finally, in some [[Austronesian languages]] it is not clear whether the distinction is applicable and all words can be best described as interjections which can perform the roles of other categories.{{r|Brown2005|p=13:631}}

The current classification of words into classes is based on the work of [[Dionysius Thrax]], who, in the 1st century BC, distinguished eight categories of [[Ancient Greek language|Ancient Greek]] words: [[noun]], [[verb]], [[participle]], [[article (grammar)|article]], [[pronoun]], [[preposition]], [[adverb]], and [[Grammatical conjunction|conjunction]]. Later Latin authors, Apollonius Dyscolus and Priscian, applied his framework to their own language; since Latin has no articles, they replaced this class with [[interjection]]. [[Adjectives]] ('happy'), [[Quantifier (linguistics)|quantifiers]] ('few'), and [[Numeral (linguistics)|numerals]] ('eleven') were not made separate in those classifications due to their morphological similarity to nouns in Latin and Ancient Greek. They were recognized as distinct categories only when scholars started studying later European languages.{{r|Brown2005|p=13:629}}

In Indian grammatical tradition, [[Pāṇini]] introduced a similar fundamental classification into a nominal (nāma, suP) and a verbal (ākhyāta, tiN) class, based on the set of [[suffixes]] taken by the word. Some words can be controversial, such as [[slang]] in formal contexts; misnomers, due to them not meaning what they would imply; or [[polysemous]] words, due to the potential confusion between their various senses.<ref name=DeSoto1985>{{Cite journal |last1=De Soto |first1=Clinton B. |last2=Hamilton |first2=Margaret M. |last3=Taylor |first3=Ralph B. |date=December 1985 |title=Words, People, and Implicit Personality Theory |url=http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/soco.1985.3.4.369 |journal=Social Cognition |language=en |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=369–382 |doi=10.1521/soco.1985.3.4.369 |issn=0278-016X|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

==History== 
Ancient Greek and Roman grammatical tradition, the word was the basic unit of analysis. Different grammatical forms of a given lexeme were studied; however, there was no attempt to decompose them into morphemes.<ref name=Robins1997>{{Cite book |last=Robins |first=R. H. |title=A short history of linguistics |date=1997 |isbn=0-582-24994-5 |edition=4th |location=London |oclc=35178602}}</ref>{{rp|70}} This may have been the result of the synthetic nature of these languages, where the internal structure of words may be harder to decode than in analytic languages. There was also no concept of different kinds of words, such as grammatical or phonological – the word was considered a unitary construct.{{r|WACLT|p=269}} The word (''dictiō'') was defined as the minimal unit of an utterance (''ōrātiō''), the expression of a complete thought.{{r|Robins1997|p=70}}

==See also==
* [[Longest words]]
* [[Utterance]]
* [[Word (computer architecture)]]
* [[Word count]], the number of words in a document or passage of text
* [[mwod:wording|Wording]]
* [[Etymology]]

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
{{Commons category}}
{{wikiquote}}
{{wiktionary|word}}
* {{Cite book |last=Barton |first=David |title=Literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language |date=1994 |publisher=Blackwell |isbn=0-631-19089-9 |location=Oxford, UK |oclc=28722223 |page=96}}
* {{Cite book |title=The encyclopedia of language & linguistics |date=2006 |publisher=Elsevier |others=E. K. Brown, Anne Anderson |isbn=978-0-08-044854-1 |edition=2nd |location=Amsterdam |oclc=771916896}}
* {{Cite book |last=Crystal |first=David |title=The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language |date=1995 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-40179-8 |location=Cambridge [England] |oclc=31518847}}
* {{Cite book |last=Plag |first=Ingo |title=Word-formation in English |date=2003 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-511-07843-9 |location=Cambridge |oclc=57545191}}
* {{Cite book |title=The Oxford English Dictionary |date=1989 |publisher=Clarendon Press |others=J. A. Simpson, E. S. C. Weiner, Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-861186-2 |edition=2nd |location=Oxford |oclc=17648714}}

{{Lexicology}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Words| ]]
[[Category:Lexical units]]
[[Category:Pragmatics]]
[[Category:Semantic units]]
[[Category:Syntactic entities]]
[[Category:Morphemes]]