Keyword

Research

Terms attached to a paper to aid discoverability in databases and search, chosen to match how readers search.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — key word merriam-webster.com accessed 22 September 2026

Merriam-Webster defines it as “a word that is a key”, specifically a significant word from a title or document used as an index to its content. First recorded 1762. The indexing sense is the one databases still run on, which is why a paper’s keywords should be the words a searcher would type rather than the words the author finds most elegant.

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. How the term is used in research writing, above, is this lexicon’s own reading.

Related terms

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

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).