The simple term 'seme' identifies any minimal feature of meaning and is relatable to 'sememe' in the same general way as 'phone' is to 'phoneme' and as 'morph' is to 'morpheme'.
- Nida (1951), a pag.5

A seme may be defined as (1) the meaning in a particular type of context of (a) a morpheme or (b) a formal part of a morpheme, or (2) the meaning implicit in the forms of a paradigmatic series. Semes of type 1 are overtly symbolized and those of type 2 are covertly indicated.
- Nida (1951), a pag.6

In employing the statement 'a class of semantically related semes', we have purposely avoided the expression 'common denominator of meaning'. The difficulty with the expression 'common denominator' [...] is that in a series of contexts a word may have practically no common denominator, and yet the series exhibits obvious relationships.
- Nida (1951), a pag.9