4.3 Lexical Form

The Lexical Form is the dictionary version of the word.

  • English examples:
    • “Oxen” may not be its own entry, but you would find it under “ox”
    • You may not find “went,” but you would find “go”
  • Hebrew dictionaries (called “Lexicons” in academia) work the same way
    • For nouns, the Lexical Form is the SINGULAR version of the noun
    • For verbs, the Lexical Form is (usually) the PERFECT 3ms form of the verb58

  1. So in a typical Hebrew Lexicon, you wouldn’t actually find the meaning of the equivalent of “to go” under “go”; you would find it under the equivalent of “(he) went”↩︎