Word.ws English Dictionary

empty word

empty word noun: a word or morpheme containing no lexical meaning and instead functions as a grammatical link or marker. Also the singular of empty words.

Noun

empty word (plural empty words)

  1. A word or morpheme containing no lexical meaning and instead functions as a grammatical link or marker.

Also used as

empty word is also the singular of empty words.

Forms of empty word

pluralempty words

Questions about empty word

What does empty word mean?
Empty word means a word or morpheme containing no lexical meaning and instead functions as a grammatical link or marker.
What part of speech is empty word?
Empty word is a noun.
What is the plural of empty word?
The plural of empty word is empty words.

Words near empty word in the dictionary

  1. empty threat
  2. empty threats
  3. Empty Vee
  4. empty vessels make the most noise
  5. empty vessels make the most sound
  6. empty word
  7. empty words
  8. empty-element tag
  9. empty-element tags
  10. empty-handed
  11. empty-handedly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: empty word (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.

Last updated:

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