Semantics

Compare

Interest

Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "semantics" over time.

Mentions

Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "semantics" over time.

Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication. Semantics, together with syntactics and pragmatics, is a part of semiotics. Read more on Wikipedia

© 2026 HN Trends. Built by Ben Evans. HN Trends is not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator.