lexeme.

An item of a language's vocabulary, treated as a single unit of lexical meaning.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• verb lexeme
• multiword lexeme
• a lexeme's forms

On the page

The dictionary treats the expression as a multiword lexeme.

The analysis separates the lexeme from its particular use in the sentence.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal / analytical. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Singular lexeme; plural lexemes. Commonness: uncommon (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: MW directly read vocabulary item/meaningful linguistic unit. Cambridge directly read count noun unit of meaning consisting of a word or group of words. Item distinguished from token and from representative lemma form; no requirement that every phrase be lexicalized. Individually useful in research, criticism, methodology or conceptual analysis. Definitions and examples are original; no mood or intensity assigned to neutral analytical concepts. Commonness is an editorial estimate, not a frequency statistic. Writing functions: units of vocabulary analysis, lexicalized groups versus individual occurrences.