Word.ws English Dictionary

signifier

Syllables: sig·ni·fi·er/ˈsɪɡnɪfaɪə/US/ˈsɪɡnɪfaɪɚ/

signifier noun: something or someone that signifies, makes something more significant or important.

Noun

signifier (plural signifiers)

  1. Something or someone that signifies, makes something more significant or important.
    • If commentators have concurred on the characterization of Reagan as a synecdoche, they have also noted his status as a signifier.2008, Diane Rubenstein, This is Not a President: Sense, Nonsense, and the American Political Imaginary
    1. A card representing a querent, question, or situation.
  2. A sign, such as a written or spoken word, which refers to some concept, object or person, the signified.
    • Here things are getting better and better for women and people of color, and gay men and lesbians, more and more integrated and open, and all you can think about is some stupid, lame problem with signifiers and signifieds.2001, Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

Examples of signifier in a sentence

  • But the conventional nature of rhyme and metre, their essential arbitrariness, points to the fact that they themselves are also signifiers, albeit paralexical and to some extent parasyntactic.
  • The paternal signifiers of labor, alienation, and the monogendered class dynamic of historical materialism remain taken-for-granted universals.
  • In Peircean terms, topics are interpretants: signifieds that become new signifiers in the endless semiotic chain of interpretations.

All 17 example sentences with signifier

Synonyms of signifier

Forms of signifier

pluralsignifiers

Origin of signifier

From signify + -er.

Words formed from signifier

Questions about signifier

What does signifier mean?
Signifier means something or someone that signifies, makes something more significant or important.
What part of speech is signifier?
Signifier is a noun.
How do you pronounce signifier?
Signifier is pronounced /ˈsɪɡnɪfaɪɚ/ (US).
What is the plural of signifier?
The plural of signifier is signifiers.

Words near signifier in the dictionary

  1. significavit
  2. significavits
  3. significs
  4. signified
  5. signifieds
  6. signifier
  7. signifiers
  8. signifies
  9. signifiest
  10. signifieth
  11. signifigance

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: signifier (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-signifier.wav.

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