paradigm
paradigm Lexical Profile
paradigm Game Scores & Validity
• noun
A typical example, pattern, or model of something; an archetype or exemplar.
"Her innovative community clinic quickly became the new paradigm for rural healthcare delivery."
A worldview or overarching framework of concepts, assumptions, values, and practices that underlies the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject or intellectual discipline.
"The discovery of plate tectonics established a revolutionary paradigm in modern geology."
In linguistics, a complete set of all the inflected forms of a word (such as a verb conjugation or noun declension), or a set of linguistic items that form mutually exclusive choices in particular syntactic roles.
"Beginning Latin students spend hours memorizing the inflectional paradigms of regular and irregular verbs."
Word Origin & Etymology
Borrowed in the late 15th century via Late Latin paradigma from Ancient Greek parádeigma ('pattern, example, precedent'), derived from paradeíknymi ('to show side by side'). Its modern sense of an overarching scientific or philosophical framework was popularized by physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.