Hermeneutics Terms - Semantics

Term

simple class definition

concordance

a book (or electronic tool) that shows what Greek or Hebrew words are the source for our translated texts

connotative meaning

the meanings associated with a word outside it's particular lexical meanings that can accompany the primary lexical meanings

denotative meaning

the main meaning of a word, it's primary lexical meaning, namely what the word refers to or names

determinate meaning

a precise meaning that can be determined nearly objectively by the textual evidence

etymology

the study of a word's beginning development through linguistic history

figurative meaning of a term

the non-literal, metaphorical meaning of a term

hapax legomena

a word that only occurs once in the Old Testament or once in the New Testament

indeterminate meaning

the precise meaning cannot be know by the textual evidence

lexicon

a specialized dictionary that communicates the English equivalents of words in the source languages of Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Aramaic, or Koine Greek

literal meaning of a term

the literal meaning of a term is what the word refers to or names in reality, its most basic meaning without referring to metaphorical or figurative senses

morpheme

the meaningful sub-parts of words, parts that signify something

morphology

the part of linguistics that studies word formation and their constituent parts, its morphemes

partial synonym

a word that has some semantic overlap with another

phoneme

a sound unit of a language that creates distinctions for the readers or hearers and does not communicate a particular meaning by the sound

phonology

the study of a language's phonemes, sound units, to create distinction so that words and meaning can be differentiated

primary usage (of a word)

the most common way a word is used

secondary usage (of a word)

a not as common way that a word is used

semantic range (in language)

a word's semantic range is the field of possible usages of that word

semantics

the study of word meaning

synonym

a word that shares semantic overlap and meaning with another word