LEXICOLOGY

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LEXICOLOGY. An area of language study concerned with the nature, meaning, history, and use of words and word elements and often also with the critical description of LEXICOGRAPHY. Although formerly a branch of PHILOLOGY, lexicology is increasingly treated as a branch of LINGUISTICS, associated with such terms as LEXEME, lexical field, lexical item, LEXICON, LEXIS, on the premiss that they offer (or could offer, if tightly defined and widely adopted) a more precise and useful basis for the study of language than imprecise terms such as WORD and VOCABULARY.

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