| lexicon \LEK-seh-kahn\ (noun) - A dictionary or vocabulary, a special set of words (medical lexicon) or the set of words used by all the speakers of a given language (mental lexicon).
"Charlotte's lexicon has grown leaps and bounds since she subscribed to Arcamax's Vocabulary ezine."
From the neuter of the Greek adjective lexicos: lexikon "of or pertaining to words," in turn from lexis "word," the noun from legein "to speak." The Proto-Indo-European root *leg- came into English as leche "physician" (akin to Serbian lekar "doctor") which eventually evolved into contemporary "leech." In Latin it came to be leg-ere "read" from which "legible" is derived. The o-grade stem (*log-) gave logos "speech, word, reason" in Greek and turns up in many words borrowed by English: "logic," "apology," and the sciences on -logy. The word today is used more and more frequently to refer to the dictionary we all carry in our heads as well as the entire vocabulary of a language. The adjective is "lexical" and the verb, "lexicalize," means to add a word to the lexicon, as "ism" and "burger" have been recently lexicalized from pieces of words. |
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