item (n.)

A term used in LINGUISTICS to refer to an individual linguistic FORM, from the viewpoint of its occurrence in an inventory and not in a CLASSIFICATION. For example, the vocabulary of a LANGUAGE, as listed in a dictionary, can be seen as a set of ‘LEXICAL items’ (e.g. the headwords in this dictionary). GRAMMATICAL and PHONOLOGICAL UNITS may also be listed as items, though this is less common, as they are more readily analysable into classes.