Term (from limit, boundary)
1. A word or phrase designed to accurately designate a concept and its relationship with other concepts within a special sphere. Terms serve as specializing, restrictive designations of objects, phenomena, their properties and relations characteristic of this sphere. They exist within the framework of a certain terminology, that is, they are included in a specific lexical system of a language, but only through a specific terminological system.
Unlike common language words, terms are not related to context. Within this system of concepts, the term should ideally be unambiguous, systematic, stylistically neutral (for example, «phoneme», «sine», «surplus value»). Terms and non-terms (words of the common language) can pass into each other. The terms are subject to the word-formation, grammatical and phonetic rules of the given language, are created by terminology of the words of the national language, borrowing or tracing foreign terminological elements. In modern science, there is a desire for semantic unification of the systems of terms of the same science in different languages (an unambiguous correspondence between the terms of different languages) and for the use of internationalisms in terminology.
2. In logic, the same as a term — an element of a formalized language, corresponding to a subject or object in the usual grammatical sense, and the subject of a judgment in traditional logic. The most common understanding: the element of sending judgments (statements) included in the so-called categorical syllogism. A distinction is made between a major term that serves as a predicate («logical predicate») of the judgment, which is the conclusion of a given syllogism, a smaller term — the subject («logical subject») of the conclusion, and a middle term that is not at all included in the conclusion of the syllogism (but is included in its judgment-premises).
ambiguous term
ambiguous term A word, phrase or expression that has multiple meanings. As a rule, these words are homonyms.
- Full (absolute) homonyms are homonyms in which the entire system of forms coincides. For example, a key (for a lock) is a key (spring), a horn (blacksmith) is a horn (wind instrument).
- Partial homonyms are homonyms that do not have the same sound in all forms. For example, weasel (animal) and weasel (a manifestation of tenderness) diverge in the form of the genitive plural (weasels — caresses).
- Graphic homonyms and others.
In addition, an abbreviation can be an ambiguous term.
For a complete list of ambiguous terms on Wikipedia, see the ambiguous terms category.