What Is a Word? – Meaning and Definition
A word is the basic meaningful unit of a language. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a word is defined as “a single unit of language that means something and can be spoken or written”.
In linguistics, a unit of meaning underlying a group of inflected word forms is often referred to as a lexeme. For example, the verb forms ‘love, loves, loved and loving’ are mapped in the brain as inflected forms of a single unit of meaning, or lexeme, called ‘love’.
A word can be just a letter (Examples: I, a) or one that contains multiple syllables (Examples: is, cat, about, theory, comfortable). Two or more words can be combined to form phrases and clauses, which in turn, can be put together to form sentences. There is, however, a particular word order and sentence structure one needs to follow to form meaningful sentences.
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