semantics

What it means

1. countableuncountablehuman sciencesA branch of linguistics studying the meaning of words.First known use 1893

   lexical semantics

   5 more examples

   Holonym: linguistics

   Meronyms: semasiology, onomasiology

   cognitive semantics

   computational semantics

   historical semantics

2. countableuncountableThe study of the relationship between words and their meanings.

   In fact, nowadays a lot is known about the semantics of natural languages, and it is surprisingly easy to build semantic representations which partially capture the meaning of sentences or even entire discourses.

   2006, Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos, Kristina Striegnitz, Learn Prolog Now!, archived from the original on 28 Mar 2015, section 8.1

3. countableuncountableThe meaning or set of meanings of a linguistic element, such as a word, morpheme or utterance.

   In very ancient or poorly documented languages, the precise semantics of words tend to be uncertain.

In a sentence

Holonym: linguistics

Where it comes from

1. Ancient Greekσημαντικός
2. Englishsemantics

From French sémantique + English -s, displacing earlier semasiology. The French is a learned borrowing from Ancient Greek σημαντικός (sēmantikós); see semantic. By surface analysis, semantic + -ics or semantic + -s.

First known use: 1893