Semasiology
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Semantics; a discipline within linguistics concerned with the meaning of a word independent of its phonetic expression. uncountable, usually
"Stylistics seemed to have become a four-letter-word in German semasiology, a fact that shows how far official German semasiology had shifted away from Reisig's initial outline, and how different it was from Bréal's semantics of language-use and Wegener's semantics of communication."
- 2 the branch of semantics that studies the cognitive aspects of meaning wordnet
Example
More examples"Stylistics seemed to have become a four-letter-word in German semasiology, a fact that shows how far official German semasiology had shifted away from Reisig's initial outline, and how different it was from Bréal's semantics of language-use and Wegener's semantics of communication."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek σημασία (sēmasía, “the meaning of a word”) + -ology.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.