Standard Lemma guide

paralexical

adj · 2 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.

  • /pæɹəˈlɛksɪkəl/

1

adj

Meaning 1

Pertaining to, or communicated through, paralexicon (parallel vocabulary, e.g. ritual or secret cant, formal jargon)

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: not-comparable

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

2

adj

Meaning 2

Pertaining to elements of speech beside the lexicon and grammar. Prosodic, paralinguistic.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: not-comparable

Examples

  • Aural communication includes spoken words and paralexical sounds (groans, screams, whimpers); sound effects (wind, a car starting up and driving away); and music.
  • The actual reading of the text itself is accompanied by certain common paralexical and extratextual features. The paralexical features are the intonational contours and stress patterns given the oral reading.
  • But the conventional nature of rhyme and metre, their essential arbitrariness, points to the fact that they themselves are also signifiers, albeit paralexical and to some extent parasyntactic.
  • Gervinus speaks here not of literal music, but of those paralexical attributes of speech that often convey more emotion than words — intonation, pitch-level, volume, tempo, etc. [...] Mussorgsky clearly desired to reduce the formal lexical content of the play to a bare minimum, leaving the greater room for paralexical play, that is, the "musical" qualities of speech.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

* para- + lexical * paralexicon + -al