Examples of

semantic
changes
Sribnaya Diana 351
 Gentle was borrowed in Middle
English in the sense of ‘born of a
good-family, with a higher social
Gentle standing’. Later the sense
‘courteous’ and then ‘kind, mild in
manners’ developed because these
qualities were regarded as qualities
of the upper classes.
Lewd

Lewd (Old English læwede)

originally meant ‘non-
ecclesiastical, lay’, then came to
mean ‘uneducated, unlearned’
from which it developed into
‘vulgar, lower-class’ and then
through ‘bad-mannered,
ignorant’, to ‘sexually
insinuating’
 Sophisticated
Sophisticated meant ‘unnatural, contaminated’ but
now has the sense of ‘urbane, discriminating’. The
word sophistry (from Old French sophistrie) still has
its original meaning of ‘specious, fallacious
reasoning’.
 Artificial
Artificial originally meant ‘man-made, artful,
skillfully constructed’, compare artifice
‘man-made construction’. But by comparison
with ‘natural’ the word came to acquire a
negative meaning because everything which
is natural is regarded positively.
 Nice
Nice (Latin nescius ‘not knowing') is recorded
from the 13th century in the sense of ‘foolish’,
then it shifted to ‘coy, shy’ and by the 16th
century had the meaning ‘fastidious, dainty,
subtle’ from which by the 18th century the
sense ‘agreeable, delightful’ developed.
 Silly (Old English sēlig ‘happy,

Silly
fortuitous') had by the 15th
century the sense of ‘deserving of
pity’ and then developed to
‘ignorant, feeble-minded’ and
later ‘foolish’.
Fast (OE fæste ‘firm') later developed
the meaning ‘quick’. The original sense is
still seen in steadfast ‘firm in position’.
 Awful
Awful originally meant "inspiring
wonder (or fear)". Used originally as a
shortening for "full of awe", in
contemporary usage the word usually
has negative meaning.
 Demagogue
Demagogue originally meant "a popular
leader". It is from the Greek dēmagōgós
"leader of the people", from dēmos "people" +
agōgós "leading, guiding". Now the word has
strong connotations of a politician who
panders to emotions and prejudice.
 Egregious
Egregious originally described something
that was remarkably good. The word is from
the Latin egregius "illustrious, select", literally,
"standing out from the flock", which is from
ex—"out of" + greg—(grex) "flock". Now it
means something that is remarkably bad or
flagrant.
 Meat in Old English, mete referred
Meat to food in general (a sense which is
retained in sweetmeat); today, it
refers to only one kind of food
(meat).
Art originally had some very general
meanings, mostly connected to 'skill'; today, it
refers just to certain kinds of skill, chiefly in
relation to aesthetic skill - 'the arts.'"
 Starve
Starve means 'to die of hunger' (or
often 'to be extremely hungry'; and
dialectally, 'to be very cold'), while
its Old English ancestor steorfan
meant more generally 'to die.'"
 Sand
Sand in OE sand had meant either 'sand'
or 'shore.' When Low German shore was
borrowed to refer to the land itself along
a body of water, sand narrowed to mean
only the granular particles of
disintegrated rock that covered this land."
 Wife,
Vulgar, and
Naughty
"The Old English version of the word wife could be used to
refer to any woman but has narrowed in its application
nowadays to only married women. A different kind of
narrowing can lead to a negative meaning [pejoration] for
some words, such as vulgar (which used to mean simply
'ordinary') and naughty (which used to mean 'having
nothing').
"None of these changes happened overnight. They were
gradual and probably difficult to discern while they were in
progress."
 Accident means an unintended
Accident injurious or disastrous event. Its
original meaning was just any
event, especially one that was
unforeseen.
Fowl in Old English referred to
any bird. Subsequently, the meaning of this
word was narrowed to a bird raised for
food, or a wild bird hunted for 'sport.'"
 Glide
Glide (OE glidan) had the meaning ‘to
move smoothly’ and now has acquired
a narrowed and specialized meaning ‘to
fly without an engine’. The example of
narrowing and specialization of
meaning in the general language: OE
dēōr ‘any wild beast’, now means ‘a
certain kind of wild beast’, ‘олень’ in
Russian.
 Idiot
Idiot had a meaning ‘a private person’ but then
got a negative meaning and now it means ‘a
stupid person or someone who has done
something stupid/someone who is mentally ill’
. The word ‘vulgar’ used to mean
‘common/ordinary’. Now it means
‘coarse/indecent’.
Nice originally meant ‘foolish’. Then it got meaning ‘good/fine’.
At Shakespeare's times the word actor used to mean ‘rogue/vagabond’.
Nowadays, this word has elevated its lexical meaning and means ‘a person
who performs a play oк a film’.