lexis

American  

[lek-sis] / ˈlɛk sɪs /

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.

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lexis British  

/ ˈlɛksɪs /

noun

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

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Etymology

Origin of lexis

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

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.

From New York Times • May 31, 2019

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

From New York Times • Jun. 7, 2017

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.

From The Guardian • Apr. 1, 2016

Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Observer Like almost everything else, chips were long ago co-opted into an ironic gastronomic lexis.

From The Guardian • Jul. 12, 2012

But there was a separate dispute far less notorious as to the quality of the lexis.

From The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 2 by Japp, Alexander H. (Alexander Hay)