semanticadj.
/sᵻˈmantɪk/, U.S. /səˈmæn(t)ɪk/ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > expectation > foresight, foreknowledge > prediction, foretelling > divination > [adjective]
divinal?1504
divinatory1569
mantical1588
semantic1665
mantic1839
mantistic1876
1665 J. Spencer Disc. Prodigies (ed. 2) v. §1. 300 'Twere easie to shew how much this Semantick Philosophy..was studied.
2.
a. Of or relating to (the study of) meaning in language. See note at semantics n. 2a.neuro-semantic, structural-semantic, syntactic-semantic, etc.: see the first element.
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the mind > language > linguistics > semantics > [adjective]
sematic1855
semasiological1880
sematological1882
semasiologic1889
semantic1890
semantical1904
semological1913
the mind > language > linguistics > semantics > meaning or signification > [adjective]
significational1868
semantic1890
sensal1896
1890 J. Earle Eng. Prose iv. 138 The word terminus, boundary, passed through the same semantic transition [as mark], and terminus in Frankish documents means a farm.
1894 Amer. Jrnl. Philol. 15 433 Freedom of interchange between r and l is limited by semantic considerations.
1901 H. Oertel Lect. Study Lang. i. 72 He was the first to distinguish clearly between the formal and the semantic side of a word.
1920 B. Malinowski in Bull. School Oriental Stud. 1 iv. 62 Sound semantic definitions valid for a wide range of linguistic types are needed before any grammatical analysis of native languages is possible.
1964 Eng. Stud. 45 (Suppl.) 33 They intend..to stress the importance of semantic studies.
1966 E. J. Lemmon in N. Rescher Logic of Decision & Action (1967) iii. 97 A suitable semantic definition of ‘p is true at moment t’ can be given.
1993 Appl. Linguistics 14 47 A discourse grammar needs to be functional and semantic in its orientation.
2008 New Scientist 12 July 44/3 In most adults, the syntactic and semantic aspects of language are mainly localised to the brain's left hemisphere.
b. Chiefly depreciative. Using, or involving the use of, words with particular meanings, esp. for euphemistic or tendentious purposes. Also: relating to or characterized by pedantic quibbling over the precise or technical meaning of words. Cf. semantics n. 2b.
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1939 El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post 9 June 4/1 You don't call drunken-sailor governmental extravagance ‘spending’. You call it ‘investing’... This art is called ‘semantics’... It is a good thing Arthur has the evidence on this ‘semantic’ business.
1949 Economist 24 Dec. 1416/2 The Supreme Court ruled that the Bermuda military base..was an American possession. It has now, however, decided that the similar base in Newfoundland is in a foreign country. The immediate sufferer from this semantic contradiction is [etc.].
1959 New Leader 2 Nov. 13/1 We do ourselves and our Asian neighbors a distinct disservice when we insist on stretching them or shrinking them to fit our particular semantic bed.
1968 N.Y. Post 15 Jan. 45/3 Each day passes with some new semantic quibble emanating from Washington.
1999 R. Kay & J. Alder Coastal Planning & Managem. iv. 113 At this level of planning the difference between planning and policy can become merely semantic.
2009 N.Y. Mag. 7 Dec. 48/3 The pro-life movement went nuts, calling her a hypocrite, semantic gymnast, and Dr. Mengele.
3. Of or relating to meaning (of any kind); = semiotic adj. 3.
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1939 Jrnl. Unified Sci. 8 143 The distinction between iconic and non-iconic signs, and the localization of the esthetic sign among the former, is a semantic distinction and localization.
1956 Jrnl. Aesthetics & Art Crit. 15 12 To put it crudely, the semantic theorists conceive the works of art as signs, just as the words of the human language are signs, and the meaning of works of art in this sense need not be symbolic at all.
1975 P. Guiraud tr. G. Gross Semiology ii. 43 Everything is a sign, a luxuriant sprouting of signs; trees, clouds, faces..are enameled with layers of interpretation which twist and knead the semantic dough.
2001 C. Porter tr. L. Marin On Representation xxii. 373 The anamorphosis of the skull in Holbein's Ambassadors can be taken as the ‘classic’ example of rupture in terms of the painting's semantic coherence and syntactic cohesion.
4. Computing. Relating to or involving data which is structured and tagged according to its meaning or intention, allowing it to be read directly by computers; of or relating to the semantic Web.Recorded earliest in semantic web n. (b) at Compounds.
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1998 United Press Internat. (Nexis) 17 Dec. [Tim] Berners-Lee said the semantic Web will spawn new companies that make a business out of indexing and finding information.
2006 J. N. Robbins Web Design in Nutshell (ed. 3) viii. 115 Semantic markup is not the same as standards compliance. It is possible to create a document..that validates entirely, but that does zilch for making the content meaningful.
2012 L. Ullman Mod. JavaScript: Develop & Design (ed. 2) ii. 42 With semantic HTML, all of the presentation gets moved into CSS, where it belongs.
Compounds
semantic aphasia n. Medicine a form of aphasia in which comprehension of grammatical constructions is impaired, but that of single words is relatively intact.
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1920 H. Head in Brain 43 156 Semantic aphasia... I have chosen the term ‘semantic’ as a label for this form of aphasia because the affection comprises a want of recognition of the full significance or intention of words and phrases.
1980 Brain & Lang. 10 120 Semantic aphasia is of theoretical interest, for its existence suggests that focal brain injuries may selectively impair the understanding of syntax (grammatical structure) while sparing the understanding of lexicon (vocabulary).
2010 B. E. Murdoch Acquired Speech & Lang. Disorders (ed. 2) ii. 69/2 Even though patients with semantic aphasia appear to understand the general meaning of speech, they are unable to see the grammatical relationship between words.
semantic bleaching n. Linguistics weakening or alteration of a word's meaning; spec. the loss of a word's semantic force as its syntactic or grammatical role becomes dominant.
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1980 N. Vincent in P. Ramat Ling. Reconstruction & Indo-European Syntax 56 The example of Latin passus ‘step’ yielding French pas. The process which seems to be operative here is a kind of semantic ‘bleaching’ whereby passus loses its independent semantic content and acquires its new and more general meaning from the syntactic environment ne —— in which it occurs with increasing frequency.
1991 N. C. Dorian in R. L. Cooper & B. Spolsky Infl. Lang. on Culture & Thought 97 Some of these borrowings had been in use among non-Jewish speakers long enough to have an ‘English meaning’ somewhat different from their original meaning in Yiddish, with the change usually in the direction of semantic bleaching: mensch had lost some of the positive force of the Yiddish equivalent and meant roughly ‘fine fellow, fine person’.
2003 S. Nicolle in K. M. Jaszczolt & K. Turner Meaning Through Lang. Contrast II. 5 When a verb of movement, direction or position or an expression involving such a verb is the lexical source for a gram such as a tense marker, semantic bleaching typically results in the loss of the semantic component of physical movement, direction or position.
semantic borrowing n. an extension of the meaning of a word by analogy with a partly synonymous term in another language; the process by which this occurs.
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1904 C. D. Buck Gram. Oscan & Umbrian Add. 354 Both may be due to Greek influence, that is, may be semantic borrowings.
1955 Jrnl. Eng. & Germanic Philol. 54 89 As a parliamentary term the word Sprecher is a semantic borrowing from English.
2009 P. Durkin Oxf. Guide Etymol. v. 136 As with loan translations, it can often be difficult to differentiate cases of semantic borrowing from coincidental semantic development in two languages.
semantic consequence n. Logic the relationship by which a sentence must be true whenever every member of a given set of sentences is true; logical consequence conceived semantically, as in model theory, rather than syntactically, as in proof theory; (also) a sentence which must be true whenever every member of a given set of sentences is true; contrasted with syntactic consequence n. at syntactic adj. Compounds 2. [A. Tarski (‘O pojęciu wynikania logicznego’, in Przegląd filozoficzny (1936) 39 58–68) is credited with having given the concept a rigorous theoretical basis and to have set it formally within the context of modern logic; compare quot. 1968. In his 1936 paper, Tarski used Polish wynikanie logiczne ‘logical consequence’, but no formal parallel to semantic consequence ; Polish wynikanie semantyczne ‘semantic consequence’ is 1960 or earlier. A German version of Tarski's paper was published in Actes du Congrès international de philosophie scientifique, Sorbonne, Paris 1935 VII. (1936) 1–11; it used German logische Folgerung . Compare semantic entailment , in same sense (E. W. Beth, 1955 or earlier; compare quot. 2000).]
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1964 C. R. Karp Lang. Expressions Infinite Length x. 104 A is a semantic consequence of ∆..if A holds in all models of ∆.
1968 Jrnl. Symbolic Logic 33 232 A set S of formulas of SC is often said to imply a formula A of SC (or, for those who favor Tarski's terminology, A is said to be a semantic consequence of S) when every assignment of truth-values to the sentence variables of SC that occur in the various members of S ∪ {A} fails to satisfy a member of S or else satisfies A.
1982 Mind 91 222 A soundness proof for a deductive system L establishes that if B is a syntactic consequence of A according to the axioms and/or rules of L, then B is also a semantic consequence of A in L.
2000 Z. Pawlak et al. in L. Polkowski et al. Rough Set Methods & Applic. xii. 595 With a logic we associate therefore two basic relations: the relation of syntactic consequence denoted ⊢, and the relation of semantic consequence (entailment) denoted ⊨.
2012 D. Papineau Philos. Devices iv. xi. 151 If [in propositional logic] one sentence is a syntactic consequence of some others (that is, it is provable from them), then it must be a semantic consequence too (that is, its truth must be guaranteed by their truth).
semantic differential n. Psychology a technique devised to measure a person's attitude towards something, by asking him or her to rate words from a given list seen as descriptive of it or not; a scale or test for implementing this.The descriptive words used are now typically a small number of bipolar pairs of adjectives, such as warm and cold,. bright and dark, and the subject is asked to choose a point on the scale represented by each pair.
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1953 C. E. Osgood Method & Theory Exper. Psychol. xvi. 713 The distribution of his [sc. the subject's] judgments on a standardized series of such scales serves to differentiate the meaning of this concept from others; for this reason this measuring instrument has been called a ‘semantic differential’.
1967 Brit. Jrnl. Psychiatry 113 727/1 This paper reports changes in transvestism and fetishism during faradic aversion treatment, as shown by clinical reports..and attitudes on evaluative scales of the semantic differential.
2012 A. Wray et al. Projects Linguistics & Lang, Stud. (ed. 3) xiv. 175 One objection to using the semantic differential scale is that it relies on respondents having the same understanding of the adjectives you use.
semantic field n. Linguistics a group of related meanings in a particular subject field, area of human experience, etc.
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the mind > language > linguistics > semantics > meaning or signification > [noun] > group of words with associated meaning
semantic field1914
word-field1934
1914 E. W. Nichols Semantic Variability i. 12 It may be worth noting here as an instance of the semantic field to which some adjectives are limited by the stem, that in general none of the adjectives in XV (or XVI) is used except with a word denoting a person or persons.
1971 J. B. Carroll et al. Word Frequency Bk. p. l The basic color terms have often been studied as a lexical set, or semantic field.
2006 A. Stefanowitsch in A. Stefanowitsch & S. Th. Gries Corpus-based Approaches Metaphor & Metonymy 5 The verb rise may be annotated as belonging to the semantic field of quantity in ‘Inflation rose to an all-time high’ and to the semantic field of motion in ‘The plane rose to a height of thirty thousand feet’.
semantic loan n. = semantic borrowing n.
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1926 Amer. Speech 1 548/1 Frǫ̆st, m., frost, frost damage to crops. A semantic loan.
1966 Slavic & East European Jrnl. 10 309 Examples of semantic loans include: cygaretka ‘cigarette’, for papieros; egzaminacja ‘examination’, for badanie; nowela ‘novel’, for powieść (in Poland nowela corresponds to the German Novelle).
2003 K. Sørensen in J. Sevaldsen Brit. & Denmark 348 Semantic loans arise when an existing Danish lexical item receives a new sense from the corresponding, sometimes formally similar, English word.
semantic memory n. Psychology the part of memory that deals with meanings and concepts, and underlies the ability to recall factual information that is not based on past experience; a memory or recollection of this type. [After Russian smyslovaja pamjat′ (1941 or earlier).]
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1962 tr. Ž. I. Šif in Psychol. Sci. in USSR 704 This confirmed again that the development of memorization and reproduction in morons, in the same way as in children capable of hearing, draws upon semantic memory.
1966 M. R. Quillian (U.S. Air Force AD641671) (abstr.) In this model, information about such things as the meanings of words is stored in a complex network, which then displays some of the desirable properties of a human's semantic memory.
1992 New Scientist 21 Nov. (Secret Life of Brain Suppl.) 4/1 Your conversation involves: semantic memory, your knowledge about language and the world, including the concept of a bike and what you know about bikes and how to ride them; and episodic memory.
2006 G. Buzsáki Rhythms of Brain xi. 278 ‘Conscious’ recollections..include..learning arbitrary facts related to the world we live in, such as the distinction between relaxation and harmonic oscillators. These latter factual or semantic memories lack a unique personal link.
semantic net n. = semantic network n.
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1956 R. H. Richens in Mech. Transl. July 23/2 I refer now to the construction of an interlingua in which all the structural peculiarities of the base language are removed and we are left with what I shall call a ‘semantic net’ of ‘naked ideas’... The elements represent things, qualities or relations... A bond points from a thing to its qualities or relations, or from a quality or relation to a further qualification.
1989 R. Rada in N. Williams & P. Holt Computers & Writing vi. 66 To link together with a semantic net every word or phrase in the document would fit the goal of a natural language processing system but not a hypertext system.
2013 E. Mentz et al. in E. Mentz Empowering IT & CAT Teachers v. 111 A semantic net consists of nodes and links, where the nodes represent the objects, facts or concepts and the links the relationships or association between concepts or objects.
semantic network n. a graphical representation of a set of words or concepts and their semantic relationships to one another.
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1964 Behavioral Sci. 9 274/2 Changes in the semantic network occur within steps. When a step commences the network is in some state s. By the end of the step, changes may have occurred in the status of individual semantic elements, and in the strengths of interrelations among the elements.
1988 J. G. Carbonell & S. Minton in J. R. Hobbs & R. C. Moore Formal Theories Commonsense World xi. 415 In a semantic network, knowledge about a domain is encoded as a graph. Typically the nodes represent concepts and the links relations.
1999 Sci. Amer. June 57/1 An index-based engine with access to a semantic network could, on receiving the query for ‘automobile’, first determine that ‘car’ is equivalent and then retrieve all Web pages containing either word.
2010 R. T. Nakatsu Diagrammatic Reasoning in AI iii. 79 In AI, semantic networks can also be used as a knowledge representation scheme that programs can use to retrieve information efficiently just like humans do.
semantic paradox n. Logic and Philosophy a paradox involving semantic notions such as truth and reference, esp. self-reference; cf. liar paradox at liar n. b, Grelling's paradox at Grelling n.
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1936 W. V. Quine in Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 22 320 Certain semantic paradoxes such as Grelling's are to be apprehended in any system which involves semantic ingredients as this one does.
1960 P. Ziff Semantic Anal. iv. 134 The fact that the semantic paradoxes can be formulated in English has led some philosophers, primarily logicians, to the conclusion that English is in a muddled state.
2011 R. Lynch tr. I. Thomas-Fogiel Death Philos. vi. 152 Russell compares this logical paradox to a much older semantic paradox, known as the liar's paradox.
semantic poetry n. a form of poetry in which certain words (esp. those which are hackneyed or overfamiliar) are replaced with their dictionary definitions.
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1949 S. Themerson (title) Bayamus and the theatre of semantic poetry.
1969 Poetry Rev. 60 274 Semantic Poetry..avoids all forms of rhetorical device and relies upon a text derived from traditional language by replacing each word by its dictionary definition.
1986 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 17 Aug. (Late City final ed.) vii. 26/1 The poet engages in ‘semantic poetry’, substituting Oxford English Dictionary definitions for the words of a bawdy limerick.
semantic primitive n. a word or phrase regarded as innately understood, but indefinable and not further analysable into smaller components of meaning.
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1959 C. W. Churchman & P. Ratoosh Measurem. iv. 87 A language without semantic primitives has many obvious advantages, besides more realistically reflecting the actual operations of measurement (where nothing is simple to understand or to perform).
1996 A. Wierzbicka Semantics: Primes & Universals ii. 81 The hypothesis that see is a universal semantic primitive is consistent with the view widespread across cultures that there is a special relationship between seeing and knowing.
2007 A. Gladkova in A. C. Schaley & D. Khlentzos Mental States II. 64 If one can show that a concept cannot be defined further via other simpler concepts, it should be accepted as a semantic primitive.
semantic web n. (a) a network of interlinked meanings; (b) Computing (also with capital initials) a proposed development of the World Wide Web in which data in web pages is structured and tagged in such a way that it can be read directly by computers (in contrast with the current World Wide Web, in which pages are typically intended to be read only by people).
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1962 Times Lit. Suppl. 18 May 364/4 The assumption that the semantic web of English is perfectly isomorphic with that of Latin.
1995 A. V. Manzo & U. C. Manzo Teaching Children to be Literate vii. 251 Students..take well known, partially known, and barely recognized words and link them together into a semantic web.
1998*semantic Web [see sense 4]. 2000 S. Kingen Teaching Lang. Arts in Middle Schools xiii. 536 Once the topic is selected, teachers create a semantic web of related teaching ideas, and they work very closely to identify the concepts and skills that students are to learn.
2011 M. MacDonald Creating Website: Missing Man. (ed. 3) v. 105 According to the visionaries who first built the Internet, the Semantic Web could usher in a golden age of information access.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2014; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.1665