lexis

[lek-sis]

noun

Linguistics.

1. the vocabulary of a language, as distinct from its grammar; the total stock of words and idiomatic combinations of them in a language; lexicon.

lexis

/ ˈlɛksɪs /

noun

1. the totality of vocabulary items in a language, including all forms having lexical meaning or grammatical function

Word History and Origins

Origin of lexis¹

1955–60; < Greek léxis speech, diction, word, text, equivalent to lég ( ein ) to speak, recount (akin to lógos account, word, Latin legere to read; logos, lection ) + -sis -sis

Word History and Origins

Origin of lexis¹

C20: from Greek lexis word

Example Sentences

Fremantle’s reveling in historical detail offers a good deal of pleasure to the reader, but it tends to compromise her decision to have her characters speak in a casual and decidedly 21st-century lexis.

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She acknowledges what that same critic called Lowe-Porter’s “errors of lexis, syntax and tense; unexplained omissions; unjustified rephrasings,” yet goes on to imply that such shortcomings are inevitable — that translation is an unverifiable mystery.

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Aimed at “Ladies, gentlewomen and other unskillful persons”, it listed approximately 2,500 “hard usuall words”, less than 5% of the lexis in use at the time.

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“The Essex Serpent” is also an example of what the nature writer Robert Macfarlane calls “a word-hoard of the astonishing lexis for landscape.”

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Projects are presently under way around the world to gain the most basic of purchases on the Anthropocene – a lexis with which to reckon it.

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