What branch of linguistics focuses on the study of meaning in words and their interrelations?

The study of meaning in words and their interrelations is known as semantics. Semantics delves into how meaning is constructed, understood, and interpreted in language, including the relationships between words and concepts, as well as the rules that govern the formation of meaning within sentences.

While pragmatics, which focuses on the context of language use and how it influences meaning, deals with conversational implicatures and context-dependent meanings, it does not primarily center on the meanings of words themselves or their structured interrelations. Syntax pertains to the rules and principles that govern the structure of sentences, focusing primarily on the arrangement of words to create coherent phrases and sentences, without direct concern for meaning. Phonetics studies the physical sounds of human speech, analyzing the articulation and acoustic properties of sounds rather than their meanings.

Thus, semantics is the branch of linguistics that specifically addresses the meaning of words and how they interrelate, making it the appropriate choice for the question at hand.