expand: date=April 2008

A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value. Typically a word will consist of a root or stem and zero or more affixes. Words can be combined to create phrases, clauses, and sentences. A word consisting of two or more stems joined together form a compound. A word combined with another word or part of a word form a portmanteau.

Etymology

English word is directly from Old English word, and has cognates in all branches of Germanic (Old High German wort, Old Norse orð, Gothic waurd), deriving from Proto-Germanic *wurđa, continuing a virtual PIE PIE: *wr̥dhom. Cognates outside Germanic include Baltic (Old Prussian wīrds "word", and with different ablaut Lithuanian var̃das "name", Latvian vàrds "word, name") and Latin verbum. The PIE stem PIE: *werdh- is also found in Greek ερθει (φθεγγεται "speaks, utters" Hes. ). The PIE root is PIE: *ŭer-, ŭrē- "say, speak" (also found in Greek ειρω, ρητωρ).

The original meaning of word is "utterance, speech, verbal expression". Until Early Modern English, it could more specifically refer to a name or title.

The technical meaning of "an element of speech" first arises in discussion of grammar (particularly Latin grammar), as in the prologue to Wyclif's Bible (ca. 1400):

"This word autem, either vero, mai stonde for forsothe, either for but."

Definitions

see: Lemma (linguistics) Depending on the language, words can be difficult to identify or delimit. Dictionaries take upon themselves the task of categorizing a language's lexicon into lemmas. These can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a "word" in the opinion of the authors.

Word boundaries

In spoken language, the distinction of individual words is usually given by rhythm or accent, but short words are often run together. See clitic for phonologically dependent words. Spoken French has some of the features of a polysynthetic language: il y est allé ("He went there") is pronounced /i.ljɛ.ta.le/. As the majority of the world's languages are not written, the scientific determination of word boundaries becomes important.

There are five ways to determine where the word boundaries of spoken language should be placed:

Potential pause

A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries. However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words.