semantically

American  

[si-man-tik-lee] / sɪˈmæn tɪk li /

adverb

1. in a way that relates to the different meanings of words or other signs or symbols.

   Humans have developed languages that are semantically rich and can cope easily with philosophical concepts.

2. in a way that deliberately takes advantage of the connotations or associations attached to certain words.

   He deals with this bombing campaign semantically by saying it is “not a war” since there are “no hostile troops on the ground.”

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Other Word Forms

• nonsemantically adverb
• pseudosemantically adverb

Etymology

Origin of semantically

semantic ( def. ) + -ally ( def. )

Example Sentences

Discussing the Ethics Commission can be semantically tricky.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 3, 2024

"Reduced memory interference refers to less confusion of semantically related terms on a word-list learning test," Krikorian said.

From Science Daily • Nov. 1, 2023

Developers have to feed the network a number of texts so that it learns which words appear in similar environments and are thus semantically similar.

From Scientific American • Jun. 15, 2023

Are the processors fast enough to detect the water and spit something out semantically while not draining the battery too fast?

From The Verge • Dec. 14, 2021

Second, the two elements being compared should be grammatically and semantically parallel, a requirement that’s easy to flub when the first is complex.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker