lexical environment
nounA lexical environment is the set of words and their meanings that surround a word and help you understand it.
In the sentence 'The bank was steep,' the lexical environment tells you that 'bank' means the side of a river.
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2. In computer programming, a lexical environment is the place in code where variable names are looked up and matched to values.
The function kept a reference to its lexical environment so it could still read the outer variable later.
3. The collection of words known or used by a person or group.
A child's lexical environment grows quickly as they learn new words at school.
4. The surrounding text that determines how a particular word or phrase should be interpreted.
Changing the lexical environment of 'light' from 'light feather' to 'light blue' changes the meaning.