paradigm

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun One that serves as a pattern or model.
• noun A set or list of all the inflectional forms of a word or of one of its grammatical categories.
• noun A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun An example; a model.
• noun In grammar, an example of a word, as a noun, adjective, or verb, in its various inflections.
• noun In rhetoric, an example or illustration, of which parable and fable are species: a general term, used by Greek writers.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun rare An example; a model; a pattern.
• noun (Gram.) An example of a conjugation or declension, showing a word in all its different forms of inflection.
• noun (Rhet.) An illustration, as by a parable or fable.
• noun (Science) A theory providing a unifying explanation for a set of phenomena in some field, which serves to suggest methods to test the theory and develop a fuller understanding of the topic, and which is considered useful until it is be replaced by a newer theory providing more accurate explanations or explanations for a wider range of phenomena.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun An example serving as a model or pattern; a template.
• noun linguistics A set of all forms which contain a common element, especially the set of all inflectional forms of a word or a particular grammatical category.
• noun A system of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.
• noun A conceptual framework—an established thought process.
• noun A way of thinking which can occasionally lead to misleading predispositions; a prejudice. A route of mental efficiency which has presumably been verified by affirmative results/predictions.
• noun A philosophy consisting of ‘top-bottom’ ideas (namely biases which could possibly make the practitioner susceptible to the ‘confirmation bias’).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the generally accepted perspective of a particular discipline at a given time
• noun the class of all items that can be substituted into the same position (or slot) in a grammatical sentence (are in paradigmatic relation with one another)
• noun systematic arrangement of all the inflected forms of a word
• noun a standard or typical example