“Paradigm” can be traced back to the Greek “paradeiknunai,” meaning “show side by side,” which helps give an explanation of the meaning. A paradigm is an example of the ideal model to follow as an example. There’s also a more technical usage of “paradigm” in linguistics. A paradigm is “a set of linguistic items that form mutually exclusive choices in particular syntactic roles.” In English, determiners are an example of a paradigm. For example, we can say “a book” or “his book” but not “a his book.”