Etymology of lexia

The word lexia doesn’t have a commonly accepted definition in modern English. Therefore, I’ve decided to build off of its closest historical use (below) to define it as “a unit of knowledge”. Given its roots, there is an inevitable connotation of words. However, I don’t think it implies that knowledge is limited to text.

I believe this fits the spirit of its closest cognates and their historical usage. Working backwards in time:

• In the 1970s, Roland Barthes defined lexie (in French) as “a minimal unit of reading, such as a sentence or sentence fragment”.
  • It is closely related to the term hypertext, that was coined by Ted Nelson (mentioned elsewhere) in the 1960s-long before the creation of the Internet. However, the idea for this sort of text linking, or hyperlinks, dates from the 1940s.
• In Latin lexis primarily means “a word”. It shows up as a root in numerous scientific terms associated with words and reading.
• However, it is derived from the Ancient Greek λέξις, where it has a more expansive list of meanings: “a saying, speech, word, or phrase”.
• Further back it likely comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *leg-, which means “to collect or gather”.