Languages have their own vocabulary for describing language.

In particular, there are words for describing words.

• Word: a basic element of language. People think they know what they mean but they do not.
• Lexeme:
• Word form: (inflected form)
• Lemma: the canonical form among a set of word forms
• Headword:
• Word stem: the part of a word that does not change even in inflected forms.
• Synonym: a word with (nearly) the same meaning as another.
• Antonym: a word with the opposite meaning.
• Cognate: a word that shares an origin with a word in another language.
• Loanword: a word borrowed from another language and adopted largely as-is.
• Etymology: the history and origin of a word's form and meaning.