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The usage of a language is the ways in which its written and spoken variations are routinely employed by its speakers; that is, it refers to "the collective habits of a language's native speakers", [1] as opposed to idealized models of how a language works (or should work) in the abstract.
Synonym list in cuneiform on a clay tablet, Neo-Assyrian period [1] A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. [2] For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are ...
The study of how the meaning of linguistic expressions changes depending on context is called pragmatics. Deixis is an important part of the way that we use language to point out entities in the world. [104] Pragmatics is concerned with the ways in which language use is patterned and how these patterns contribute to meaning.
A thesaurus (pl.: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar meanings to other words), [1] [2] sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms.
A loanword is distinguished from a calque (or loan translation), which is a word or phrase whose meaning or idiom is adopted from another language by word-for-word translation into existing words or word-forming roots of the recipient language. [4] Loanwords, in contrast, are not translated.
Literal language is the usage of words exactly according to their direct, straightforward, or conventionally accepted meanings: their denotation. Figurative (or non-literal) language is the usage of words in a way that deviates from their conventionally accepted definitions in order to convey a more complex meaning or a heightened effect. [1]
Semantics studies meaning in language, which is limited to the meaning of linguistic expressions. It concerns how signs are interpreted and what information they contain. An example is the meaning of words provided in dictionary definitions by giving synonymous expressions or paraphrases, like defining the meaning of the term ram as adult male sheep. [22]
Colloquialism (also called colloquial language, everyday language, or general parlance) is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conversation and other informal contexts . [ 1 ]