Lexical item

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In lexicography^{[citation needed]}, a lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words (catena) that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary).^{[citation needed]} 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 items composed of more than one word are also sometimes called lexical chunks, gambits, lexical phrases, lexicalized stems, or speech formulae.^{[citation needed]} The term polyword listemes is also sometimes used.^{[citation needed]}