1.2.4. term versus Word

A term, or terminology unit, is the name or designation of a concept in a particular subject field. A term may be:

• a word
• an expression
• a symbol
• a chemical or mathematical formula
• a scientific name in Latin
• an acronym
• an initialism
• the official title of a position, organization or administrative unit

A term or terminology unit in a specialized language is distinguished from a word in general language by its single-meaning relationship (called monosemy) with the specialized concept that it designates and by the stability of the relationship between form and content in texts dealing with this concept (called lexicalization).

Other indications that you are dealing with a term are its frequency of use and its relatively fixed contextual surroundings (its co-occurrents), and any typographical enhancements (for example, italics, boldface print, and quotation marks). Terms have a rather limited set of morphological and lexical structures: generally, terms are nouns (simple, derived, or compound), but sometimes a verb, adjective, noun phrase, verb phrase, or adjective phrase proves to be a term.

It is important to be able to differentiate between words and terms, because terminology work is not equivalent to taking an inventory of words. That is the purview of general language dictionaries. Terminology work consists of establishing specialized vocabularies, that is, tying designations to their respective concepts in a particular subject field.

Exercise

Read the following text, then answer the questions on differentiating between words and terms.

A stout branched glabrous herb that is native to Eastern Asia and sometimes cultivated for its rhizomes which are used as a carminative, its stalk is used as a substitute for onions.