Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In logic:
  • noun In the Stoical logic
  • noun The major premise of a hypothetical syllogism, or modus ponens: thus, in the reasoning, “If it is day, it is light; but it is day: hence, it is light,” the first premise was called the lemma.
  • noun A premise in general.
  • noun A Megaric sophism depending on the question whether a man who says “I am lying” is truly lying or not.
  • noun In mathematics, a proposition upon which it is necessary to arrest the attention for the sake of proving an ulterior one, but which interrupts the regular series of theorems; also, a premise drawn from another branch of mathematics than that under consideration.
  • noun A theme; a thesis; the subject of an epigram, or of a musical composition, etc.
  • noun In embryology, the primary or outer layer of the germinal vesicle. Pascoe.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Math., Logic) A preliminary or auxiliary proposition demonstrated or accepted for immediate use in the demonstration of some other proposition, as in mathematics or logic.
  • noun A word that is included in a glossary or list of headwords; a headword.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun mathematics A proposition proved or accepted for immediate use in the proof of some other proposition.
  • noun linguistics, usually The canonical form of an inflected word.
  • noun linguistics, less frequently A lexeme; all the inflected forms of a term.
  • noun botany One of the specialized bracts around the floret in grasses.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the lower and stouter of the two glumes immediately enclosing the floret in most Gramineae
  • noun a subsidiary proposition that is assumed to be true in order to prove another proposition
  • noun the heading that indicates the subject of an annotation or a literary composition or a dictionary entry

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek λῆμμα (lēmma, "premise, assumption"), from λαμβάνω (lambanō, "I take").

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Examples

Comments

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  • Jane Austen's little known contribution to the discipline of Logic.

    February 8, 2008

  • Plural of lemming.

    February 5, 2010

  • Wouldn't that be a di-lemma?

    *dodges tomatoes*

    February 6, 2010

  • In addition, lemma means 1. the husk or shell of a fruit; 2. the lower bract of a floret of a grass; 3. the external layer of the germinal vesicle (Oxford English Dictionary). Moreover, lemma signifies the external covering of an anatomical or biological structure. Examples are plasmalemma, the plasma membrane of any cell, and sarcolemma, the outer membrane of a myocyte (cell of a muscle).

    July 1, 2011

  • it's my cousin's name....

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    January 15, 2012