lexeme

From Latin lexis, from Ancient Greek λέξις (léxis, “word”) +‎ -eme, a suffix indicating a fundamental unit in some aspect of linguistic structure. Extracted from phoneme, from Ancient Greek φώνημα (phṓnēma, “sound”), from φωνέω (phōnéō, “to sound”), from φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound”).

• enPR: lĕks'ēm IPA^(key): /ˈlɛksiːm/

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lexeme (plural lexemes)

1. (linguistics) A unit of lexical meaning, roughly corresponding to the set of inflected forms taken by a single word, so for example the lexeme run includes as members "run" (lemma), "running" (inflected form), and "ran", but excludes "runner" (a derived term).
   • 2014 September 25, Rochelle Lieber, Pavol Stekauer, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology‎, page 347:

     In a typical lexicalist approach (e.g. Koontz-Garboden 2006), the unmarked lexeme is taken as lexically listed, even if its meaning (as it often does) includes templatic entailments, and the derivational morphology is taken to operate on the underived form to yield the derived form. This is the case not only morphologically, but also semantically.

2. (computing) An individual instance of a continuous character sequence without spaces, used in lexical analysis (see token).

• lexical
• lexemic

lexeme n pl

1. plural of lexem