A semantic field denotes a segment of reality symbolized by a set of related words.
[7] Synonymy requires the sharing of a sememe or seme, but the semantic field is a larger area surrounding those.
[7] Andersen (1990: p.327) identifies the traditional usage of "semantic field" theory as: Traditionally, semantic fields have been used for comparing the lexical structure of different languages and different states of the same language.
[9]The origin of the field theory of semantics is the lexical field theory introduced by Jost Trier in the 1930s,[10]: 31 although according to John Lyons it has historical roots in the ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Johann Gottfried Herder.
[1] In the 1960s Stephen Ullmann saw semantic fields as crystallising and perpetuating the values of society.
But semantic fields do not stand in relations of opposition to each other, nor do they derive their distinctiveness in this way, nor indeed are they securely bounded at all.