How to use semantics in a sentence
39 example sentences · noun
Semantics means a branch of linguistics studying the meaning of words. Example: “Semantics is a foundation of lexicography.”
Examples of semantics by meaning
nounA branch of linguistics studying the meaning of words.
- Semantics is a foundation of lexicography.
nounThe study of the relationship between words and their meanings.
- In fact, nowadays a lot is known about the semantics of natural languages, and it is surprisingly easy to build semantic representations which partially capture the meaning of sentences or even entire discourses.2006, Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos, Kristina Striegnitz, Learn Prolog Now!, archived from the original on 28 Mar 2015, section 8.1
nounThe meaning or set of meanings of a linguistic element, such as a word, morpheme or utterance.
- In very ancient or poorly documented languages, the precise semantics of words tend to be uncertain.
nounThe meanings of individual words, as opposed to the overall meaning of a passage.
- The semantics of the terms used are debatable.
nounThe meaning of computer language constructs, in contrast to their form or syntax.
- file sharing and locking semantics
nounPettiness or triviality.
- Who cares? This is all just semantics!
More sentences with semantics
- In this case, there is no semantics for the preposition of.2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Dependency Grammar” (chapter 3), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, pages 68–69. From the entry syntactic
- Because of this, immutable POJOs are common and may have value semantics.2021, Duncan McGregor, Nat Pryce, Java to Kotlin, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN. From the entry POJO
- For example, in Saramaccan, property items can be reduplicated to encode counterexpectational semantics.2018, John H. McWhorter, The Creole Debate, Cambridge University Press, page 18. From the entry counterexpectational
- Instead, it develops a semantics of counterfactual propositions, opening up onto a pluriverse of alternative event-contingent worlds.2012, D. Savat, Uncoding the Digital: Technology, Subjectivity and Action in the Control Society, →ISBN. From the entry pluriverse
- He makes a distinction which goes beyond semantics as he compares humanism and hominism.2011, Peter Denbo Haskins, The Transforming Power of Suffering, page 113. From the entry hominism
- This enormous complexity is due to its semantics and the large amount of encyclopaedic knowledge required.2006, M.Gori, M.Ernandes, G.Angelini, “Cracking Crosswords: The Computer Challenge”, in Oliviero Stock, Marco Schaerf, editors, Reasoning…. From the entry AI-complete
- The difference between an association and an aggregation is entirely conceptual and is focused strictly on semantics.2002, Kirk Knoernschild, edited by Addison-Wesley Professional, Java Design: Objects, UML, and Process. From the entry aggregation
- It first builds a model of the actor, by accessing its lexical semantics for the noun, bankrobber.1991, Ruth M.J. Byrne, “The Construction of Explanations”, in Michael F. McTear, Norman Creaney, editors, AI and Cognitive Science ’90…. From the entry bankrobber
- Stated succinctly, the position of the afficionadi of interleaving semantics seems to be as follows.1981, Josep Díaz, Isidro Ramos, Formalization of Programming Concepts: International Colloquium: Peniscola, Spain, April 1981…. From the entry afficionadi
- Knuthian systems, hereinafter called K-systems, have been called declarative semantics, K-grammars and attributed grammars.1976, Laurian M. Chirica, David F. Martin, “An algebraic formulation of Knuthian semantics”, in 17th Annual Symposium on Foundations of…. From the entry Knuthian
- Of late the professors of semantics have divided into two factions.1945, Henry Louis Mencken, The American Language, page 102. From the entry rumble-bumble
- Kalapalo also use two other forms with contraspective semantics.2015, Gunter Swnft, Ellen B. Basso, Ritual Communication, →ISBN, page 245. From the entry contraspective
- Rhetorical relations have truth conditional effects that contribute to meaning but lie outside the purview of compositional semantics.2003, Nicholas Asher, Alex Lascarides, Logics of Conversation, page 7. From the entry purview
- I think many of the anti-cure people focus too much on the semantics of the word "cure." How about "fix" instead?1999, Gary Karp, Life on Wheels: For the Active Wheelchair User. From the entry anti-cure
- The three atomicity semantics of an update broadcast using the timewheel group communication service are affected by the group membership protocol.1998, Shivakant Mishra, Christof Fetzer, Flaviu Cristian, “The Timewheel Group Membership Protocol”, in Jose Rolim, editor, Parallel and…. From the entry timewheel
- They often have no semantic meaning in themselves, though they may affect the semantics of brivla to which they are attached.1997, John W. Cowan, The Complete Lojban Language →ISBN http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-download_wiki_attachment.php?attId=194. From the entry brivla
- The American experiment was in danger of becoming an exercise in semantics easily corrupted as to its meaning.1985, Alice S. Maxwell, Marion B. Dunlevy, Virago!: The Story of Anne Newport Royall (1769–1854), Jefferson, N.C.; London: McFarland &…. From the entry wordmaster
- Well, this is a matter of semantics.1962 February 22, Jack Jackson, “Statement of Jack Jackson, Director of Public Relations, the National Grange”, in All-channel Television…. From the entry shackle
- Understanding these formalizations is not crucial for understanding the basic idea behind a Kratzerian semantics for 'ought' or the objections I ultimately raise against it.2015, Matthew Chrisman, The Meaning of 'ought'. From the entry Kratzerian
- “Scripts” are distinct from the executable code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language with distinct semantics.2012, Ivan Ivanov, Marten van Sinderen, Boris Shishkov, editors, Cloud Computing and Services Science, →ISBN, page 7. From the entry executable code
- Let’s embrace the standard semantics of tropery—let’s stop seeing a welter of clichés and instead call it what it is: a programming language.2010, Scott Brown, “Reheat, Repeat”, in Wired, volume 18, number 9, page 98. From the entry tropery
- Two independently derived denotational semantics for Prolog are contrasted, Arbab and Berry's for the full language and Nicholson and Foo's for a databaseless language.1994, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, volume 16, number 3, New York, N.Y.: Association for Computing Machinery…. From the entry databaseless
- The purpose of this paper is to present an algebraic treatment of Knuth's approach to the specification of the semantics of context-free languages.1976, Laurian M. Chirica, David F. Martin, “An algebraic formulation of Knuthian semantics”, in 17th Annual Symposium on Foundations of…. From the entry Knuthian
- Four predictions about differences in effectiveness of these cues, derived from the Katz and Fodor and the Quillian theories of semantics, were confirmed.1972 December 1, Richard C. Anderson, “Semantic organization and retrieval of information from sentences”, in Journal of Verbal Learning…. From the entry superordinate
- The lexicon or dictionary in a language is then the set of word forms and idiomatic expressions—common sets of words that co-occur often—each with a meaning (the semantics).2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Introduction” (chapter 1), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 2. From the entry co-occur
- Wolfram Alpha researcher and chatbot author Robert Lockhart describes the chatbot community as being split between two competing approaches, what he calls “pure semantics” and “pure empiricism.”2012, Brian Christian, The Most Human Human […] , Anchor Books, →ISBN, page 29. From the entry chatbot
- It is as a pioneer and “land clearer” that we know Martin-Löf – one of the principal clarifiers of the syntax and semantics of constructive mathematics.2012 -, P. Dybjer, Sten Lindström, Erik Palmgren, Epistemology versus Ontology, →ISBN. From the entry clarifier
- The account to be pursued here relies crucially on a syncategorematic interpretive rule applying at the syntax—semantics interface, which is triggered when its templatically defined input requirements are met.2012, Ivona Kučerová, Ad Neeleman, Contrasts and Positions in Information Structure, →ISBN, page 88. From the entry templatically
- In this chapter, I address both the semantics of the Case-marking opposition in depictives in the East Slavic languages and also the syntax of depictive secondary predication in general.2007, Kylie R. Richardson, Case and Aspect in Slavic, OUP Oxford, →ISBN, page 111. From the entry depictive
- Here such cases as ghost words & misglosses, secondary semantics, different etymologies for one etymon or one etymology for different etyma, and finally semantic overpermissiveness are discussed.2006, Folia orientalia - Volumes 42-43, page 467. From the entry etymon
- However, (pace the wikiphobes) you could look at the wikipedia page for "grammar", which will tell you it comprises phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.2006 July 18, Richard Herring, “Re: Word count of minimum vocabulary”, in sci.lang (Usenet). From the entry wikiphobe
- In effect, cognitive semantics mediates between dualism and its polar opposite, eliminative behaviorism, which repudiates the existence of any mental events or states by reducing them to bodily behavior.2000, Warren Buckland, The Cognitive Semiotics of Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 40. From the entry eliminative behaviorism
- These include weak references, finalisers, ephemerons, and lazy values, whose semantics will have to be preserved with the new GC so as to not break programs that use those features.2020, KC Sivaramakrishnan et al., Retrofitting Parallelism onto OCaml. From the entry ephemeron
Meaning of semantics
- noun A branch of linguistics studying the meaning of words.
- noun The study of the relationship between words and their meanings.
- noun The meaning or set of meanings of a linguistic element, such as a word, morpheme or utterance.
Questions about semantics in a sentence
- How do you use semantics in a sentence?
- Semantics is used as a noun. For example: “Semantics is a foundation of lexicography.”
- What is a short sentence with semantics?
- “file sharing and locking semantics”
- What does semantics mean?
- Semantics means a branch of linguistics studying the meaning of words.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: semantics (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use semantics in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/semantics. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
