Word.ws English Dictionary

desemanticisation

desemanticisation is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of desemanticization.

Meaning of desemanticization

Noun

desemanticization (uncountable)

  1. The loss or removal of all or part of the original semantic content (meaning) of a word or morpheme, sometimes (but not always) as part of grammaticalization.
    • […] Desemanticization
      By this process, a lexical item receives a second, non-lexical function, which may ultimately become its only function. Thus, in addition to its lexical meaning, a word receives […]
      Once again, this leads to the desemanticization of lexical meaning, namely that of the action...1984, Bernd Heine, Mechthild Reh, Grammaticalization and Reanalysis in African Languages, Helmut Buske Verlag Gmbh, →ISBN, pages 39 and 40
    Synonyms:
    desemantization

Questions about desemanticisation

What is desemanticisation the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of?
Desemanticisation is the non-Oxford British English standard spelling of desemanticization.

Words near desemanticisation in the dictionary

  1. deselenation
  2. deselenations
  3. deselenization
  4. deselenizations
  5. deselenized
  6. desemanticisation
  7. desemanticise
  8. desemanticised
  9. desemanticises
  10. desemanticising
  11. desemanticization

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: desemanticisation (page history and authors); desemanticization (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “desemanticisation.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/desemanticisation. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.