The notions of word and word meaning are problematic to pin down, and this is reflected in the difficulties one encounters in defining the basic terminology of lexical semantics. In part, this depends on the fact that the words ‘word’ and ‘meaning’ themselves have multiple meanings, depending on the context and the purpose they are used for (Matthews 1991). For example, in ordinary parlance ‘word’ is ambiguous between lexeme (as in “Color and colour are spellings of the same word”) and lexical unit (as in “there are thirteen words in the tongue-twister How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”). Let us then elucidate the notion of word in a little more detail, and specify what key questions will guide our discussion of word meaning in the rest of the entry..