Lexeme

A lexeme (/ˈlɛksiːm/ ^ⓘ) is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning,^[1] a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single root word. For example, in English, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, which can be represented as RUN.^{[note 1]}

One form, the lemma (or citation form), is chosen by convention as the canonical form of a lexeme. The lemma is the form used in dictionaries as an entry's headword. Other forms of a lexeme are often listed later in the entry if they are uncommon or irregularly inflected.

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