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In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations , which can be added, removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that cognates across space and time have very different meanings.
Words' meanings may also change in terms of the breadth of their semantic domain. Narrowing a word limits its alternative meanings, whereas broadening associates new meanings with it. For example, "hound" (Old English hund) once referred to any dog, whereas in modern English it denotes only a particular type of dog. On the other hand, the word ...
In the context of historical linguistics, formal means of expression change over time. Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology. Along with clitics, words are generally accepted to be the smallest units of syntax; however, it is clear in most languages that words may be related to one another by rules. These rules are ...
In linguistics, reappropriation, reclamation, or resignification [1] is the cultural process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group. It is a specific form of a semantic change (i.e., change in a word's meaning).
Diachronically (i.e. looking at changes over time), clines represent a natural path along which forms or words change over time. However, synchronically (i.e. looking at a single point in time), clines can be seen as an arrangement of forms along imaginary lines, with at one end a 'fuller' or lexical form and at the other a more 'reduced' or ...
Languages change over time. When language change involves a shift in a language's syntax, this is called syntactic change . An example of this is found in Old English, which at one point had flexible word order, before losing it over the course of its evolution. [ 30 ]
The latest use cited in the OED is 1547, but this late example may be an intentional archaism. By the end of the 14th century, mid had been overtaken by with . If the first part of midwife is a reflex of this preposition (neither OED nor AHD affirm this derivation), [ 1 ] it is the only trace of the with meaning in Modern English.
The meaning of words can change over time, sometimes dramatically. It is a fallacy to examine the origins of a word or its historic use and consider those meanings must be applicable today. Our sources may use words in a way that our readers don't, or they would today regard as wrong or even offensive.