a minimal meaningful unit of language, the meaning of which cannot be understood from that of its component morphemes. Take off (in the senses to mimic, to become airborne, etc) is a lexeme, as well as the independent morphemes take and off
WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2025
lex•eme
(lek′sēm),USA pronunciation n. [Ling.]
- Linguisticsa lexical unit in a language, as a word or base;
vocabulary item.
- lex(ical) or lex(icon) + -eme 1935–40
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