Theories of lexical semantics provides a comprehensive, synoptic overview of research paradigms in lexical semantics. The book tries to fill that gap by presenting the major traditions of word meaning research in linguistics from a historical perspective, charting the evolution of the discipline from the mid nineteenth century to the present day. The book contains five chapters, each dedicated to a major school of lexical semantic theory: historical - philological semantics, structuralist semantics, generativist semantics, neostructuralist semantics, and cognitive semantics. The book primarily is a must-read for all researchers in lexical semantics who are interested in the broader panorama and the historical evolution of their discipline. It is also especially important for any academic discipline in which a knowledge of this subfield of linguistics could be useful: anthropology, psychology, philosophy, literary studies, cognitive science.