Lexicology

Lexicology is the part of linguistics which studies words, their nature and meaning, words' elements, relations between words (semantical relations), word groups and the whole lexicon.

The term first appeared in the 1820s, though there were lexicologists in essence before the term was coined. Computational lexicology as a related field (in the same way that computational linguistics is related to linguistics) deals with the computational study of dictionaries and their contents. An allied science to lexicology is lexicography, which also studies words in relation with dictionaries – it is actually concerned with the inclusion of words in dictionaries and from that perspective with the whole lexicon. Therefore lexicography is the theory and practice of composing dictionaries. Sometimes lexicography is considered to be a part or a branch of lexicology, but the two disciplines should not be mistaken: only lexicologists who do write dictionaries are lexicographers. It is said that lexicography is the practical lexicology, it is practically oriented though it has its own theory, while the pure lexicology is mainly theoretical.