Lemma (linguistics)

A lemma is a word that stands at the head of a definition in a dictionary. All the head words in a dictionary are lemmas. Technically, it is "a base word and its inflections".^[1]

A lemma is the word you find in the dictionary. A lexeme is a unit of meaning, and can be more than one word. A lexeme is the set of all forms that have the same meaning, while lemma refers to the particular form that is chosen by convention to represent the lexeme.

In English, for example, run, runs and running are forms of the same lexeme, but run is the lemma.

1. ↑ Nation, Paul & Waring, Robin 1997. Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists. In Schmitt, Norbert & McCarthy (eds) Vocabulary: description, acquisition and pedagogy. Cambridge University Press, p9. ISBN 978-0-521-58551-4