1. Plural of deictic; words or expressions whose meaning depends on the context of utterance, such as pronouns (I, you, he), demonstratives (this, that), and adverbs of time and place (here, now, tomorrow).
Usage: linguistics term; also called indexicals

Examples

• In the sentence 'I am here now,' the words 'I,' 'here,' and 'now' are all deictics.
• Deictics like 'this' and 'that' require the listener to know what the speaker is pointing to.
• The meaning of deictics changes depending on who is speaking and when the utterance occurs.
• Linguists study deictics to understand how context shapes language interpretation.
• Personal pronouns such as 'you' and 'we' are common examples of deictics in English.