Word.ws English Dictionary

monoseme

monoseme noun: a single semeion or mora.

Noun

monoseme (plural monosemes)

  1. A single semeion or mora.
    • The foot pattern for the baby caprine song is: diseme/monoseme/diseme/diseme.2001, John William Johnson, “Computer Technology and the Study of Music and Prosody: The Case of Somali Oral Performance”, in Russell H. Kaschula, editor, African Oral Literature: Functions in...
    • In a given poem, a monoseme contains a short vowel of one mora, and a diseme contains two moras.2008, John William Johnson, “Music and Poetry in Somalia”, in Douglas Puchowski, editor, The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, volume 1, →ISBN, page 58
  2. A monosemous term; a term with one meaning.
    • Moreover, a word that is a monoseme in general language can be used equivocally in a special language.1982, FID/CR Report Series, number 20, International Federation for Documentation, Committee on Classification Research, page 3
    • As a dictionary search makes clear, preciously few ordinary words are monosemes, but they do exist: hippopotamus may be an example.1993, Fred Riggs, “Social Science Terminology: Basic Problems and proposed Solutions”, in Helmi B. Sonneveld, Kurt L. Loening, editors, Terminology: Applications in Interdisciplinary Communication...
    Antonyms:
    polyseme
  3. An underlying meaning of a word, more general than a sememe.
    • A monoseme in the semantic respect is less than a word but in the syntactical configuration — more.1972, Linguistics: An International Review, number 77, page 71
    • Our observations made it clear that the new meanings, which emerged in the inner forms of the lexical units, had taken root under direct “pressure” of the monosemes of the confronted and identified counterpart in the source-language.1977, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Linguists, page 229

Adjective

monoseme (not comparable)

  1. (rare) Monosemic.
    • Thus, in the early period of PIE lexical units having conglomerate monoseme internal forms with “existential” (motional), “spatial”, and “temporal” meanings began to polarize.1984, Sándor Rot, “Inherent Variability and Linguistic Interference of Anglo-Old-Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman French Language Contacts in the Formation of Grammatical Innovations in Late Old English...
    • The insensibility towards a semantic structure adaptation goes so far that the (also imperfective) monoseme synonym jijam of grem in the meaning ‘to go’ is disappearing nowadays.2003, Walter Breu, “Bilingualism and linguistic interference in the Slavic-Romance contact area of Molise (Southern Italy)”, in Regine Eckardt et al., editors, Words in Time: Diachronic Semantics...

Examples of monoseme in a sentence

  • But its primary meaning must be rhythmic, since it is not used to group notes longer than a monoseme […]2011, Charles H. Cosgrove, An Ancient Christian Hymn with Musical Notation. Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786: Text and Commentary, →ISBN, page 116:
  • Others see it as a single meaning, a monoseme, or ideal meaning, Jakobson’s Gesamtbedeutung […]2006, John Hewson, Vit Bubenik, From Case to Adposition: The development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages, →ISBN, page...
  • The Dutch word ‘loods’, as a person, is monoseme and can only mean ‘a pilot in shipping’, and certainly not ‘airplane pilot’ or any other type of guide.2007, Jan Hoogland, “Lexical Gaps in Arabic: Evidence from Dictionaries”, in Everhard Ditters, Harald Motzki, editors, Approaches to Arabic...

Antonyms of monoseme

Forms of monoseme

pluralmonosemes

Questions about monoseme

What does monoseme mean?
Monoseme means a single semeion or mora.
How do you use monoseme in a sentence?
But its primary meaning must be rhythmic, since it is not used to group notes longer than a monoseme […]
What part of speech is monoseme?
Monoseme can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of monoseme?
The plural of monoseme is monosemes.

Words near monoseme in the dictionary

  1. monoselenides
  2. monosemant
  3. monosemantemic
  4. monosemantic
  5. monosemants
  6. monoseme
  7. monosemes
  8. monosemic
  9. monosemically
  10. monosemous
  11. monosemy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: monoseme (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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