En gramática tradicional, una palabra (del latín parabŏla) es cada uno de los segmentos limitados por delimitadores en la cadena hablada o escrita, que puede aparecer en otras posiciones y que está dotado de una función. Lingüísticamente, el concepto de palabra es mucho más problemático de lo que la definición anterior sugiere. En efecto, determinar qué constituye fonéticamente o morfosintácticamente una palabra es un problema abierto; así, por ejemplo, junto a los morfemas ligados y las palabras léxicas existen los clíticos cuyo estatus de palabra es discutido. En la cadena hablada ordinariamente no existen pausas y la segmentación de palabras depende de factores prosódicos difíciles de precisar. La rama de la lingüística que estudia la composición y estructura interna de las palabras es la morfología.

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In linguistics, a word is the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content (with literal or practical meaning). This contrasts deeply with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own. A word may consist of a single morpheme (for example: oh!, rock, red, quick, run, expect), or several (rocks, redness, quickly, running, unexpected), whereas a morpheme may not be able to stand on its own as a word (in the words just mentioned, these are -s, -ness, -ly, -ing, un-, -ed).A complex word will typically include a root and one or more affixes (rock-s, red-ness, quick-ly, run-ning, un-expect-ed), or more than one root in a compound (black-board, rat-race). Words can be put together to build larger elements of language, such as phrases (a red rock), clauses (I threw a rock), and sentences (He threw a rock too, but he missed). The term word may refer to a spoken word or to a written word, or sometimes to the abstract concept behind either. Spoken words are made up of units of sound called phonemes, and written words of symbols called graphemes, such as the letters of the English alphabet.

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