lexeme

[lek-seem] /ˈlɛk sim/
noun, Linguistics
1.
a lexical unit in a language, as a word or base; vocabulary item.
Origin
1935-40; lex(ical) or lex(icon) + -eme
British Dictionary definitions for lexeme

lexeme

/ˈlɛksiːm/
noun
1.
(linguistics) 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
Word Origin
C20: from lex(icon) + -eme
Word Origin and History for lexeme
n.

1937, from lexicon + -eme, ending abstracted from morpheme. Related: Lexemic.

lexeme in Technology

grammar
A minimal lexical unit of a language. Lexical analysis converts strings in a language into a list of lexemes. For a programming language these word-like pieces would include keywords, identifiers, literals and punctutation. The lexemes are then passed to the parser for syntactic analysis.
(1996-04-06)