paradigm

ot noun

1. A pattern, a way of doing something, especially a pattern of thought, a system of beliefs, a conceptual framework. Thomas Kuhn's landmark “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” got people talking about paradigm shifts, to the point the word itself now suggests an incomplete or biased perspective.
2. 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. The paradigm of "go" is "go, went, gone."
3. An example serving as the model for such a pattern.