sememes

Noun

sememe (plural sememes)

1. The smallest unit of meaning; especially, the meaning expressed by a morpheme.
   • Any given word of a natural language in its shared acceptations represents a seme, sememe, or set of sememes, but the profile that we can compile as representing the shared elements in a list of synonymous and parasynonymous words is an artificial construct, an instance of meta-language, thus...1995, Louise Schleiner, Cultural Semiotics, Spenser, and the Captive Woman, Lehigh University Press, page 71