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»Sound or combination of sounds having meaning, forming an indivisible linguistic unit«, says MacMillan, and Webster's Collegiate adds »speech sound« distinguishing such a definition from music. The indivisibility feature is better understood as the impossibility to use independantly part of what is the word, as -rd, in this case. But if this definition is functional within the linguistic framework, it does not cover what is a lexical unit, often made up of separate words, bound or not in writing. And it does not account for semantics, as exemplified by »credible«, which is analysed into two notions, but unbreakable as distinct »words«. This observation shows the flaw in a method using meaning without a prior understanding of it. Words as used currently by people are semantic units, whether their utterances are meaningful or not. A parallel observation can be made using the cautionary words of Assoziations-Baster : »Nobody will see the things you refer to.« It shows that the common definition of »word« is made in terms of actual reference (e.g. »this is a X«) rather than in terms of meaningfulness.
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