semantics
Pluralsemantics
- 1The meaning or range of meanings carried by a linguistic element, such as a word, a morpheme, or an utterance.
Linguists compared the semantics of color terms across dozens of languages.
The semantics of the suffix shifted over the centuries, from 'full of' to merely 'having'.
Similarmeaning
Note
Here the word names meanings rather than a field, and the grammar can follow: the semantics of words tend to be uncertain takes a plural verb, while the name of the discipline takes a singular one. The plural verb comes naturally when the meanings of several words are in view, as with ancient or poorly documented languages.
- 2Triviality or pettiness in a detail or distinction, especially a quibble over words that changes nothing of substance.
Whether we call it a layoff or a restructuring is semantics; forty people still lost their jobs.
Let's not get bogged down in semantics when the deadline is tomorrow.
Similarhairsplitting, quibbling, nitpicking, pedantry
Note
Mostly heard as a dismissal (it's just semantics, this is all semantics) that waves off a disagreement as a matter of wording rather than substance. It is a loose, colloquial stretch of the scholarly word, and it can backfire: when the choice of word really does change something, calling it semantics sounds evasive.
- 3The meaning of the constructs in a computer language, as distinct from their form or syntax.
In this language, assignment has copy semantics, so changing the new variable never alters the original.
The specification defines the semantics of every operator, including what happens on overflow.
Note
Programmers name the behavior being described: copy semantics, move semantics, file-locking semantics. The contrast with syntax is the point, since two languages can spell a statement alike and mean different things by it. Formal semantics goes further and describes a language's meaning mathematically, so programs can be reasoned about precisely.
- 4The branch of linguistics that studies the meanings of words and how words relate to what they mean.
Her research in lexical semantics focuses on how children learn verbs of motion.
Semantics is often taught alongside syntax, which deals with how sentences are built.
Note
The field's name takes a singular verb (semantics is), and it sits beside syntax, which studies how sentences are built, and pragmatics, which studies meaning in context. English took it from French sémantique, and it displaced the older name semasiology, now kept for one approach within the field. Subfields carry a qualifier: lexical semantics, cognitive semantics.
Less common meaning
- 5The meanings of the individual words in a text, as distinct from the overall meaning of the passage.
You can follow the semantics of a poem word by word and still miss its point.
A good translator gets the semantics of each word right without losing the sense of the paragraph as a whole.
Similarmeaning
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of semantics apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From French sémantique, from Ancient Greek σημαντικός (sēmantikós); it displaced the earlier term semasiology. By surface analysis, it is semantic + -ics.