Lemma is a word that I first heard in a lexicography class during my year abroad and, ironically, I didn’t know what it meant and had to look it up. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, a lemma is “a form of a word that appears as an entry in a dictionary and is used to represent all the other possible forms [of the word]”. Let’s simplify this with an example.
When reading, you come across the sentence “She discombobulates her mother daily”. You don’t know the meaning of “discombobulates”, so you go to look it up in a dictionary. However, you find that there are no results for your search. That’s because “discombobulates” is the form of the verb “discombobulate” used with he or she in the present tense. If you want the definition, you have to look up “discombobulate” without the s at the end.
If we go back to the definition of lemma, we can see that “discombobulate” represents all other forms of the verb. The same applies to other types of words; the lemma for “dogs” is, you guessed it, “dog”. So, next time you need to look up a word, make sure to use the lemma.
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