Word.ws English Dictionary

lexicalizing

lexicalizing is the present participle and gerund of lexicalize.

Meaning of lexicalize

Verb

lexicalize (third-person singular simple present lexicalizes, present participle lexicalizing, simple past and past participle lexicalized)

  1. (intransitive) To become part of the vocabulary of a language as a single lexical unit with a distinct meaning.
  2. (transitive) To accept a term into one's own vocabulary as a distinct lexical unit.
    • In fact, the child will lexicalize one, two, or three elements of the semantic representation according to his lexicalization span.1975, Eric H. Lenneberg, Elizabeth Lenneberg, Foundations of Language Development: A Multidisciplinary Approach, volume 1, page 192

Questions about lexicalizing

What is lexicalizing the present participle and gerund of?
Lexicalizing is the present participle and gerund of lexicalize.

Words near lexicalizing in the dictionary

  1. lexicalize
  2. lexicalized
  3. lexicalizer
  4. lexicalizers
  5. lexicalizes
  6. lexicalizing
  7. lexically
  8. lexically scoped
  9. lexicase
  10. lexico-
  11. lexicode

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lexicalizing (page history and authors); lexicalize (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: “lexicalizing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lexicalizing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.