Examples of Semantics: Meaning & Types

Have you ever heard someone say, “That’s just semantics?” Basically, they’re saying you’re picking apart the meaning of a word to draw a different conclusion but it all means the same thing. It’s possible the person saying, “It’s just semantics,” is wrong, though.

Semantics is the study of the relationship between words and how we draw meaning from those words. People can absolutely interpret words differently and draw different meanings from them. Some examples of semantics will help you see the many meanings of English words.

What Is Semantics?

Semantics involves the deconstruction of words, signals, and sentence structure. It influences our reading comprehension as well as our comprehension of other people’s words in everyday conversation. Semantics play a large part in our daily communication, understanding, and language learning without us even realizing it.

For example, in everyday use, a child might make use of semantics to understand a mom’s directive to “do your chores” as, “do your chores whenever you feel like it.” However, the mother was probably saying, “do your chores right now.”

Since meaning in language is so complex, there are actually different theories used within semantics, such as formal semantics, lexical semantics, and conceptual semantics.

• Formal Semantics - Formal semantics uses techniques from math, philosophy, and logic to analyze the broader relationship between language and reality, truth and possibility. Has your teacher ever asked you to use an “if… then” question? It breaks apart lines of information to detect the underlying meaning or consequence of events.
• Lexical Semantics - Lexical semantics deconstruct words and phrases within a line of text to understand the meaning in terms of context. This can include a study of individual nouns, verbs, adjectives, prefixes, root words, suffixes, or longer phrases or idioms.
• Conceptual Semantics - Conceptual semantics deals with the most basic concept and form of a word before our thoughts and feelings added context to it.
  For example, at its most basic we know a cougar to be a large wild cat. But, the word cougar has also come to indicate an older woman who’s dating a younger man. This is where context is important.

Conceptual semantics opens the door to a conversation on connotation and denotation. Denotation is the standard definition of a word. Meanwhile, connotation deals with the emotion evoked from a word. Connotation will be derived from the manner in which you interpret a word or sentence’s meaning. As such, semantics and connotation are deeply entwined. For a deeper dive, read these examples and exercises on connotative words.

Semantics in Everyday Life

One part of studying language is understanding the many meanings of individual words. Once you have a handle on the words themselves, context comes into play. The same word can be said to two people and they can interpret them differently.

For example, imagine a man told a woman, “I care for you… a lot.” Wouldn’t that made the woman’s heart melt? Sure, if he just said that out of the blue, walking down the beach one day. But, what if the woman told the man, “I love you,” and, after a long pause, all he said was, “I care for you… a lot.” She’d be crushed. So, context (the current situation) will always play a role in everyday semantics.

Here are some examples of everyday words that can have more than one meaning:

• A water pill could be a pill with water in it but it is understood to be a diuretic that causes a person to lose water from his body.
• “Crash” can mean an auto accident, a drop in the Stock Market, to attend a party without being invited, ocean waves hitting the shore, or the sound of cymbals being struck together.
• Depending on context, a flowering plant could be referred to as a weed or a flower.
• A human can be referred to as a male, female, child, adult, baby, bachelor, father or mother.
• To call someone a lady means more than simply being female. Semantics tell us that, if she’s a lady, she possesses elegance and grace.
• “Young” can allude to a colt, filly, piglet, baby, puppy, or kitten.
• To say something was challenging leads us to believe it was not a good experience. It wasn’t just difficult, it was also unpleasant.
• The verb “move” can mean change place, push, pull or carry, or stir emotion.
• To call someone an angel doesn’t mean they inhabit heaven. Semantics leads us to believe they have a lovely disposition.
• The word “create” can mean build, make, construct, erect, compose or imagine.
• The simple word "on" can have many meanings, such as: on call, on the roof, on cloud nine, on edge, on fire, on purpose, on demand, on top, or on the phone.