What's In a Word? Trying to Define An Oft-Used Term

Linguists try to discern what a "word" is. For instance, George Yule thinks that we're probably better off talking about "linguistic forms" or lingual elements rather than words: he suggests that "word" is a slippery concept (See Yule, The Study of Language).

D.A. Black maintains: "The WORD has yet to be given a satisfactory universal definition. People sometimes assume that a word is recognizable because it represents a 'whole thought' or a 'complete thing.' But this view is clearly wrong when one looks at the lack of correspondence between words from different languages."

He then goes on to illustrate this point by referring to the "best-known definition" of "word" that was put forth by Leonard Bloomfield, namely, "a minimal free form." But Black insists that even this definition is not that helpful when we are dealing with non-English languages. He then makes a distinction between the spoken and written word (See his work Linguistics for Students of NT Greek, pp. 57-58).

However one may choose to define "word," when studying Greek, it is good to remember that we want to advance beyond words to sentences, phrases, clauses, paragraphs and whole discourses. In this way, one can begin to get the sense of the words.