Lexical

//ˈlɛksɪkəl// adj

adj ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Concerning the vocabulary, words, sentences or morphemes of a language. not-comparable

    "So, it seems clear that the idiosyncratic restrictions relating to the range of complements which a Preposition does or does not permit are directly analo- gous to the parallel restrictions which hold in the case of Verbs. The restric- tions concerned are not categorial in nature (i.e. they are not associated with every single item belonging to a given category): on the contrary, they are lexical in nature (that is to say, they are properties of individual lexical items, so that different words belonging to the same category permit a different range of complements)."

  2. 2
    Concerning lexicography or a lexicon or dictionary. not-comparable
  3. 3
    Denoting a content word as opposed to a function word. not-comparable

    "a lexical verb"

  4. 4
    Relating to alphabetical order or a generalization thereof. not-comparable
Adjective
  1. 1
    of or relating to words wordnet
  2. 2
    of or relating to dictionaries wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
conjugatederivativeechoicetymologicglossematiciconic

Example

More examples

"From a lexical point of view, Esperanto appears to be an Indo-European language, but structurally it is an isolating language, like Chinese."

Etymology

From Latin lexis, from Ancient Greek λέξις (léxis, “word”) + -al.

Related phrases

lexical analysislexical analyzerlexical aspectlexical bundlelexical categorylexical choicelexical correspondencelexical definitionlexical densitylexical gaplexical innovationlexical item

More for "lexical"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.