context

Research

The surrounding circumstances that give something meaning — necessary for interpreting quotations, sources, and findings accurately.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — context merriam-webster.com accessed 23 September 2026

Merriam-Webster: “the parts of a discourse that surround a word, phrase, or passage and that help to explain its meaning”, and “the situation in which something happens: environment, setting”. From Latin contexere, to weave or join together; first recorded 1577. The weaving metaphor is the older idea and still the better one — context is not background to a claim but the fabric the claim is part of.

Merriam-Webster is cited as the dictionary of record: where an entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it. The research usage above is this lexicon’s own.

Deeper treatment: this term also has a full entry in the Business Library.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).