lemma

English

Pronunciation

UK and General American: /ˈlɛmə/
Hyphenation: lem‧ma

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek λῆμμᾰ (lêmmă), “premise, assumption,” from the same root as λᾰμβᾰ́νω (lămbắnō), “to take.”

Noun

lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata)

1. Mathematics. A proposition proved or accepted for use in proving another proposition.
   A lemma is often a smaller result used on the way to a theorem. Famous examples include Euclid's lemma, Schur's lemma, Urysohn's lemma, Yoneda's lemma, and Zorn's lemma.
2. Mathematics, by extension. A result that may originally have served as a supporting proposition, but later acquired independent importance and became widely used.
3. Linguistics; lexicography. The canonical form of an inflected word: the form normally used as a dictionary headword.
   Cat is a lemma; cats is an inflected form. Likewise, break can serve as the lemma for break, breaks, broke, broken, and breaking.
   Synonym: citation form. Related concept: lexeme.
4. Psycholinguistics. An abstract conceptual representation of a word associated with a particular meaning before its phonological form is produced.

Lemma and stem

A lemma is not always the same as a stem. A lemma is the conventional form chosen to represent a lexeme in a dictionary or word list; a stem is a form used in morphological structure and word formation. One lexeme may have more than one stem while still having one lemma.

More lemmas and related terms

five lemma · pumping lemma · lemmatize · lemmatization · sublemma

Related terms

dilemma · sublemma · trilemma · tetralemma · pentalemma

See also

basic form · canonical form · citation form · dictionary form · headword · infinitive