Lexis

Affix: A meaningful group of letters added to the beginning or end of a word to make a new word. Affixation is the process of adding a prefix or suffix to word.

1. A prefix is a meaningful group of letters added to the beginning of a word, e.g. appear – disappear.

2. A suffix is a meaningful group of letters added to the end of a word to make a new word which can be a different part of speech, e.g. care – careful.

Antonym: The opposite of another word, e.g. hot is the antonym of cold.

Collocation: Words which are used together regularly, e.g. The teacher made a presentation NOT The teacher performed a presentation.

Compounds: Nouns, verbs, adjectives or prepositions that are made up of two or more words, e.g. assistant office manager, bring back, long-legged, due to.

False friend: A word in the target language which looks or sounds as if it has the same meaning as a similar word in the learners’ first language but does not.

Homophone: A word which sounds the same as another word, but has a different meaning or spelling, e.g. I knew he had won; I bought a new book.

Idiom: A group of words that are used together, in which the meaning of the whole word group is different from the meaning of each individual word, e.g. She felt under the weather means that she felt ill.

Lexical set: A group of words or phrases that are about the same topic, e.g. weather - storm, to rain, wind, cloudy etc.

Lexis: Individual words or sets of words, e.g. homework, study, whiteboard, get dressed, be on time.

Multi-word verb: see phrasal verb.

Part(s) of speech: A description of the function of a word or a phrase in a sentence, e.g. noun, verb, adjective.

Phrasal verb, multi-word verb: A verb which is made up of more than one word (e.g. a verb + adverb particle or preposition) which has a different meaning from each individual word, e.g. look after - A mother looks after her children.

Prefix: see affix.

Suffix: see affix.

Synonym: A word which has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word, e.g. nice is a synonym of pleasant.