Semantic and lexical change

Meanings in contexts

A dictionary gloss is an index to uses, not a complete meaning. Historical semantic analysis compares occurrences, genre, collocations and referents at several dates. An older and newer sense can coexist for centuries. Broadening extends the range of referents; narrowing restricts it; metaphor relates domains by perceived similarity; metonymy uses an association in experience. These are descriptions of an argued path, not labels one can assign from two English translations alone.

Essentials of Linguistics gives a Spanish example: Latin vōta “vows” and Spanish boda “wedding.” Its account links the marriage ceremony to vows and describes a metonymic development. The source also gives Old Church Slavonic брашьно “food” and Bulgarian брашно “flour,” a narrowing to a particular kind of food. Both cases span time and language stages; spellings, meanings and intermediate evidence need checking before turning either into a universal mechanism.

Replacement and borrowing

A language can replace a common word with another inherited word, coin a new expression, or borrow one. A borrowed word can itself change meaning after adoption. WOLD separates immediate donor from earlier etymology and records graded evidence for loan status. That distinction matters when a word has travelled through several languages: the oldest known origin is not automatically the source from which the receiving community copied it.

Frequency in a digitized corpus is also evidence about what survived and what the corpus contains. An administrative archive may create an apparent rise in a technical word simply because more accounts were preserved. A convincing lexical history reports the corpus scope, dates, genres and variant spellings alongside a usage claim.

Practice

Gather three dated uses of one word whose meaning is said to have changed. Paraphrase the meaning that each context actually supports; do not copy a single modern dictionary gloss into all three rows. State one plausible intermediate sense and mark whether it is attested or inferred.