What is lexis?

Lexis refers to individual words or sets of words, for example: tree, get up, first of all, all's well that ends well, i.e. units of vocabulary which have a specific meaning,

Key concepts

What kinds of meaning can words have?

We often speak of the meaning of words. In fact words have different kinds of meaning. Firstly, there is the meaning that describes the thing or idea behind the vocabulary item, e.g. a tree is a large plant with a wooden trunk, branches and leaves. This meaning is called ‘denotation’, and we speak of ‘denotative meaning’. Then there is figurative meaning. We speak, for example, of ‘the tree of life’ or ‘a family tree’. This imaginative meaning comes from, but is different from, a word's denotative meaning. There is also the meaning that a vocabulary item has in the context (situation) in which it is used, e.g. in the sentence ‘We couldn't see the house because of the tall trees in front of it’ we understand how tall the trees are partly from knowing the meaning of tall and partly from knowing how tall a house is, so the meaning of tall in this sentence is partly defined by the context.

The meaning of some vocabulary items can also come from their form, e.g. from prefixes, suffixes or compounds (nouns made from two or more separate words).