Gloss, glossing, glossary
when annotating a piece of writing, a gloss is like a side note in a text, explaining what the term means in the language being written in, in various forms, including:
- a word in quotes or the margin of a text that mentions the translation, of the lexeme or of the literal, e.g. inflected form
- a parallel, word-for-word translation, the common form in linguist analysis; see e.g. [1]
- translation including details up to inflection, even etymology and cross-references(verify).
In linguistics, this can be more specifically about
word-aligned parallel sentences,
marking meanings and grammatical properties at a per-word basis
...and may have some conventions, sometimes made into guidelines to follow (e.g. [2]).
Glossing
- in linguistics, refers to adding annotation of this type
- ...or, outside of linguistics, to generalize or obfuscate or hide something by 'glossing over details, glossing ideas'.
Interlinear glosses refers to such annotations in translations or other side-by-side texts.
Glossary can be used in the more general meaning of 'a collection of glosses' (dictionary-like), but often turns up in a more specific 'list of technical terms with their definitions, for this specific book/paper/topic.'
See also diglossia.