Abbreviation - a short form of a word or phrase, for example: tbc = to be confirmed; CIA = the Central Intelligence Agency
Accent - the distinct pronunciation patterns of a group of people
Aggregator - a dictionary website which includes several dictionaries from different publishers.
Antonym - a word that means the opposite of another word
Connotation - the associated meanings we have with certain words, depending on the person reading or hearing the word, and on the context in which the word appears
Context - A term referring to the environment in which an element (sound, word, phrase) occurs. The context may determine what elements may be present, in which case one says that there are 'co-occurrence restrictions' for instance 1) /r/ may not occur after /s/ in a syllable in English.
Contranyms - a word with two opposite meanings, e.g. sanction (which can mean both ‘a penalty for disobeying a law’ and ‘official permission or approval for an action’).
Diachronic - refers to language viewed over time and contrasts with synchronic which refers to a point in time. This is one of the major structural distinctions introduced by Saussure and which is used to characterise types of linguistic investigation.
Etymology - the history of a word, including the language it came from, if appropriate, and when it began to be regularly used.
Grammar - the building blocks of sentences (words, phrases, clauses, etc.) and how they go together to mean something to the reader or listener
Linguistics - The study of language. As a scientific discipline built on objective principles, linguistics did not develop until the beginning of the 19th century. The approach then was historical as linguists were mainly concerned with the reconstruction of the Indo-European language.
Loanword - An English word that has come into use having been ‘borrowed’ from another language.
Overextension - widening the meaning of a word so that it extends to apply not just to the actual object but also to other objects with similar properties or functions.
Pronunciation - A collective reference to the way sounds are articulated in a language. Given its concrete nature pronunciation is a matter of phonetics rather than phonology.
Semantics - meanings of words, both on their own and in relation to other words in the text
Sociolect - a variety of language that is characteristic of the social background or status of its user
Vocabulary - The set of words in a language. These are usually grouped into word fields so that the vocabulary can be said to show an internal structure.
