Accepcions

Accepcions are the senses or meanings attributed to a word or expression within a language. A single lexical item can have multiple acepcions, reflecting different usages, historical developments, or regional variations. In linguistics and lexicography, each acepción corresponds to a distinct semantic sense, with its own typical contexts, syntactic behavior, and collocations. The collection of acepcions for a word is a key aspect of polysemy, which describes how a word can bear related or unrelated meanings.

The concept is central to dictionaries, where entries list separate acepcions in order of commonality or historical development. Some acepcions are closely linked (polysemous senses), sharing a common core, while others may be more independent or even homonymous in origin. Distinctions between sense and reference, and between denotation and connotation, often play a role in describing how acepcions relate to real-world usage and emotional or stylistic associations.

Etymologically, acepcions derive from older forms in Romance languages, with equivalents in other language families. The term is commonly used in Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, and related languages, and is often translated into English as “sense” or “meaning,” while in dictionaries it may be presented as separate senses or acepciones.

Example: the word banco has acepcions including a seating furniture, a financial institution, and a bench in a sports context, illustrating how one word can acquire multiple related or distinct meanings over time.