Word for Wednesday: Lexicon

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Its been well over two years since we started blogging here at Spellzone, and hopefully our weekly posts have helped to grow your vocabulary and appreciation of words; leading us nicely to this week’s Word for Wednesday: lexicon.

A lexicon is a wordbook, a dictionary containing the words of a particular language and in linguistics; a lexicon is the ‘total inventory of morphemes in a given language’.

But to me, the beauty of the word lexicon is found in its personal application – we each have our very own lexicon: our vocabulary. The wonderful thing about language is how it constantly changes and expands, allowing us to grow and adapt our personal lexicon every day, picking up new words, sharing them with others and giving new and colourful descriptions to things that seemed familiar.

The word ‘lexicon’ comes from the Greek ‘lexikon’ – ‘word book’. I love the idea of our vocabulary being like a vast imaginary book to which we can add new words as we discover them and even bookmark our favourite ones!

Next time you discover a new word you like (perhaps it is even ‘lexicon’) you can imagine writing it in your internal lexicon… This reminds me of the ‘Mind Palace’ memory technique but that’s certainly one for another post…

Hugh MacDermott


13 May 2015
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