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A morpheme that can stand alone because it's meaningful, e.g. reason and able (from unreasonable).

A different meaning that can be attributed to a word depending on the context. For example, What a cute chubby baby! and Why does Laura look so chubby?

A multi word unit is a 'lexical phrase', ie a combination of words that has become fixed and behaves as if it were one word, e.g. if looks could kill, long time no see, to and fro, etc.

A multi word verb which consists of two or more parts. The second part (or particle) is either a preposition (look into) or an adverb (throw away).

A new theory of lexis which puts emphasis on how words are used in the real world and not on the definitions given to them by dictionaries. According to lexical priming, mental notes are necessary in terms of noticing how words combine, what grammatical patterns they follow, what meaning they're associated with, what kind of style or register they occur in, etc.

A letter or group of letters added to the beginning or end of a word to make a new word, e.g. unhappy, careless.

A letter or group of letters added at the end of a word to make a new word, e.g. sweetness, childhood.

A letter or group of letters added at the beginning of a word to make a new word, e.g. rewrite, unbelievable.

A type of affix that can be inserted within the base form of a word to create a new word or intensify meaning, e.g. abso-bleedin'-lutely, guaran-damn-tee.

A group of words with the same topic, function or form, e.g. cat, dog, tortoise, hamster are part of the topical lexical set 'pets'.

A group of words that are commonly found together. Lexical chunks include collocations but these usually just involve content words, not grammar.
In this dialogue there are five possible chunks:
- Did you 'stay long' 'at the party'?
- No, I 'got out of there' 'as soon as' they 'ran out of' food.

The degree of formality of language, e.g. Would you mind passing the salt? is more appropriate for a formal situation with strangers. Pass me the salt. would be used for a situation where friends are talking, or possibly when being rude.

A morpheme that can't stand alone because it has no grammatical or lexical meaning, e.g. un (from unreasonable).

The process of forming a new word from an existing one by adding morphemes, e.g. happiness, unhappy derive from happy.

The modification of a word to express a different grammatical category or meaning, e.g. from masculine to feminine (actor-actress), from singular to plural (box-boxes), from present to past (try-tried), etc.

A homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word but has a different spelling and meaning. For example, see-sea, right-write, etc.

Homonym is a word that sounds and is spelt the same as another word, but has a different meaning. For example, rose (as in rise-rose-risen) and rose (as in the flower), fine (as in feeling OK) and fine (as in money you have to pay if you do something illegal).

Hyponym is a word that belongs to a larger semantic category, e.g. whale, dog, mouse, camel, etc. are all hyponyms of mammals.

Words which co-occur with each other and which language users, through custom and practice, have come to see as normal and acceptable, e.g. clenched fist, On the other hand, a matter of life or death, etc.

A teaching approach which gives priority to vocabulary rather than grammar, focussing on language chunks and on how choice of words influences subsequent possibilities and restrictions in the sentence.

A word that can have multiple similar meanings, e.g. That's a fair point. This isn't fair on anyone. The trial was fair.