word

The word “word” means the smallest unit of language that carries meaning on its own, made up of one or more sounds or letters. In plain terms, a single unit of language, or, more loosely, someone's promise or a bit of news.

“Word” is pronounced wurd (/wɜɹd/ in IPA).

Here is “word” used in a sentence: “"Cat" is a single word, but "cats" adds a small unit of meaning too.”

Words with a similar meaning to “word” include vocable and lexeme.

“Word” is a noun.

The word “word” comes from Old English. From Old English "word," tracing back to a very old Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to speak." It's a distant relative of "verb" and "verve.".

“Word” is a very common word in modern English, usually learned at around the A1 level.

“Word” has 4 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: the smallest unit of language that carries meaning on its own, made up of one or more sounds or letters.

A syllable is a unit of sound — a single beat of pronunciation, like the two beats in 'wa-ter' — and carries no meaning on its own. A word is a unit of meaning that can stand alone. A word may have one syllable or many, but only the word actually means something.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful part of language, but it cannot always stand alone — prefixes and endings like 'un-' or '-ed' are morphemes. A word is a unit that can stand alone in a sentence. Some words are a single morpheme; others, like 'unkindly', combine several.

A word is a single unit of meaning, while a phrase is a small group of words that work together as one idea, like 'the big red bus'. A phrase can act as a unit within a sentence but, unlike a clause, does not contain both a subject and its verb.

The shortest words are 'a' and 'I', each a single letter and a single sound, yet each carries full meaning — one an article, the other a pronoun. They show that a word's length has nothing to do with its status: even one letter can be a complete, meaningful unit of language.