SIGNIFIER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does signifier mean? 

• SIGNIFIER (noun)
  The noun SIGNIFIER has 1 sense:

1. the phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of a word that can be used to describe or identify something

  Familiarity information: SIGNIFIER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SIGNIFIER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of a word that can be used to describe or identify something

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

descriptor; form; signifier; word form

Context example:

the inflected forms of a word can be represented by a stem and a list of inflections to be attached

Hypernyms ("signifier" is a kind of...):

word (a unit of language that native speakers can identify)

Domain category:

linguistics (the scientific study of language)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "signifier"):

plural; plural form (the form of a word that is used to denote more than one)

singular; singular form (the form of a word that is used to denote a singleton)

ghost word (a word form that has entered the language through the perpetuation of an error)

base; radical; root; root word; stem; theme ((linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed)

etymon; root (a simple form inferred as the common basis from which related words in several languages can be derived by linguistic processes)

citation form; entry word; main entry word (the form of a word that heads a lexical entry and is alphabetized in a dictionary)

abbreviation (a shortened form of a word or phrase)

acronym; initialism (a word formed from the initial letters of the several words in the name and pronounced as one word)

Derivation:

signify (denote or connote)

 Context examples 

Et cela doit signifier, said she, qu'il y aura la dedans un cadeau pour moi, et peut-etre pour vous aussi, mademoiselle.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)