Word Meanings

In English or any regional language, every word has its meaning. Therefore, a few words are difficult and need to be explained in simple words, which is done with the help of word meanings. In English, vocabulary plays an essential role, as it forms the basis of sentence formation and adds meaning to the words and entire sentence. These words can be in single words, phrasal words or a chain of words used together. In English, there are a total of 8 types of words, namely Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Prepositions, Determiners, and Collectives which are used together to form sentences.

What are words?

Words are a combination of letters and sound used in different forms in sentences and meanings are derived from them. In the English language, different words have different meanings. 

Types of Word Meanings

Generally, word meanings can be divided into two broad categories, namely:

• Grammatical Meaning
• Lexical Meaning

Grammatical Meaning

Grammatical Meanings give a structured meaning to a sentence. It helps to create a relationship between words and sentences. This is done using various kinds of words like:

• Prepositions (at, on, in, with, to, from, etc)
• Conjunctions (and, or, between, among, etc)
• Pronouns (I, he, she, them, whose, etc)
• Particles ( over, up, away, not, etc)
• Auxiliaries (have, shall, would be, is, could, etc)
• Determiners (my, this, the much, more, etc)

Lexical Meaning

Lexical Meanings are considered “ordinary words” used as groups of words or a single word to define words like a definition in nature. It has semantic importance related to the vocabulary in English and does not take suffix or prefix into consideration. It can be a single word, chain of words, phrasal verbs, etc.

The Lexical Meaning can further be classified into two categories, namely:

1. Associative Meaning.
2. Conceptual Meaning.

Conceptual meaning means the essence of any word or sentence or its core. It answers questions like what the word or chain of words are together trying to denote or make us understand. It can be an abstract word, thought or even illustration. Thesis and research papers are generally based on this conceptual knowledge.

Associative Meaning means to create an understanding using collective information from the speaker of the sentence. It is a semantic type used to refer to another person’s thinking using expressions or statements.

It can further be divided into five types, namely:

1. Collocative meaning

Collocative means to form words naturally and derive meaning from them that are explained with synonyms or simple meanings later on. Examples of collocative words include keep, make, break, have and so on.

2. Stylistic meaning

Stylistic is a lexical repetition used to express emotions and denote the style of the literary form used.  It can be formal, informal as well as neutral in its structure. Examples include slogans, alliterations, life, animals, and so on. It uses devices like metaphor, irony, and oxymoron to denote emotions.

3. Affective meaning

Affective talks about the speaker’s mood, therefore the attitude, sentiment, and personality in which the lines are spoken or written like angry, sad, happy, interrogative, etc.  Example: He is such a dreadful person!  (Here, the speaker is denoting an unpleasant attitude)

4. Reflected meaning

This simply means understanding which or what kind of the meaning has been reflected or shown as one word has a different meaning when used in different situations and different vocabulary meaning or conceptual meaning. 

 For example, Too much of everything is dangerous. Everything has a negative meaning. It can have a positive meaning in some other sentence like, When you believe in hard work, everything seems easy.

5. Connotative meaning

Connocative denotes special meaning and emotional sentiments attached with any word or chain of words. For example, It was a cosy winter morning, where cosy denotes a special meaning.

6. Thematic meaning

As the name goes, it tells us about the theme and structure of a sentence, like what is the emphasis and what the speaker or listener wishes to communicate in the semantic form of English.

For example, The end is near. ( Here, the focus is to denote the end of something)

English to Hindi

If you translate the terms in English language to the native language of Hindi, you may get a variety of contextual meanings. For example

1. Hard-working- परिश्रमी.
2. House- घर.

Conclusion

English vocabulary allows us to convert word meaning like complex phrasal verbs or hard words into simple meanings like synonyms or translate it into other languages like English to Hindi and vice-versa.  It must be clear that Word meanings are like synonyms but very different from it and a wider term comparatively.

Various forms of words form a structure and maintain a grammatical format like prepositions, determiners, pronouns, verbs, nouns, and so on combined with various forms of associative semantics and conceptual frameworks. It must be clear that Word meanings are like synonyms but is a more wider term in comparison.