Semasiology

Semasiology (from Greek:σημασία (semasia) "signification, meaning") is a discipline within linguistics concerned with the question "what does the word X mean?". It studies the meaning of words regardless of their phonetic expression. Semasiology departs from a word or lexical expression and asks for its meaning, its different senses, i.e. polysemy. The opposite approach is known as onomasiology.