Lexical item

A Lexical item (or lexical unit, lexical entry) is a single word or chain of words that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (vocabulary). Examples are "cat", "traffic light", "take care of", "by-the-way", and "it's raining cats and dogs". Lexical items can be generally understood to convey a single meaning, much as a lexeme, but are not limited to single words. Lexical items are like semes in that they are "natural units" translating between languages, or in learning a new language. In this last sense, it is sometimes said that language consists of grammaticalized lexis, and not lexicalized grammar.

The entire store of lexical items in a language is called its lexis.

Lexical chunks

Lexical items composed of more than one word are also sometimes called lexical chunks, gambits, lexical phrases, lexical units, lexicalized stems or speech formulae. The term polyword listemes is also sometimes used. Common types of lexical chunks include:

• Words, e.g., cat, tree
• Phrasal verbs, such as put off or get out
• Polywords, e.g., by the way, inside out
• Collocations, e.g., motor vehicle, absolutely convinced.
• Institutionalized utterances, e.g., I'll get it, We'll see, That'll do, If I were you, Would you like a cup of coffee?
• Idioms, e.g., break a leg, was one whale of a, a bitter pill to swallow
• Sentence frames and heads, e.g., That is not as...as you think, The problem was
• Text frames, e.g., In this paper we explore...; Firstly...; Secondly...; Finally ....

An associated concept is that of noun-modifier semantic relations, wherein certain word pairings have a standard interpretation. For example, the phrase "cold virus" is generally understood to refer to the virus that causes a cold, rather than a virus that is cold.

See also

• Function word
• Lexical chain
• Lexical semantics
• Lemma (morphology)
• Lexeme, Sememe
• Lexicography
• List of basic linguistic topics
• Set phrase