Semantic Shift

How do the meanings of words change over time? This week, we look at semantic shift: how the senses of words drift over time, and how we can describe the different patterns we find across languages.
This is Topic #26!
This week's tag language: Swahili!
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Also, if you liked this video, you'll probably enjoy the Alliterative etymology video series at / alliterative !
Etymology sources:
English meat: www.uni-due.de...
English girl: www.oxforddicti...
English deer: www.etymonline....
Spanish rezar: books.google.c...
English holiday: www.oxforddicti...
Japanese sake: Personal communication
English grasp: Lyle Campbell, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. MIT Press, 2004
English nice: www.uni-due.de...
German pumpernickel: de.wikipedia.or..., de.wikipedia.or...
English silly: www.uni-due.de...
French poison: www.cornelsen.d...
English immoral: www.etymonline....
English hearse: www.etymonline....
Looking forward to next week!

[@bobsander4739]

this was very comprehensive without being overbearing. great video!

[@thelingspace]

Thanks so much! Glad to be able to help. ^_^

[@bmac53]

In the United States, "holiday" is still used much more specifically. Typically we only refer to special religious or government days off as holdidays. We use the word "vacation" to refer to a trip or time off from work or school.

[@thelingspace]

Yeah, there's definite variation on that one. English definitely has a lot of regional variation! It makes sense - that's how languages work, basically - but there's a lot of interesting things to be found there.

[@davidonfim2381]

I'd argue that most examples of amelioration and pejoration are examples of "strengthening". First a word's meaning changes its valence qualitatively, and then it intensifies. The best examples I can come up with are words related to sex, bodily functions, race/ethnicity, mental ability, and so on. I think most taboo words start out as fairly common and mild words, especially when they're used to replace a more taboo word, and then their meaning gets stronger (or more sexual, more "dirty", etc). The fact that the change is usually towards the more negative side doesn't mean the meaning isn't getting stronger.

[@rillainayah5996]

Thank you for the explanation!

[@samirtahraoui2511]

Enriching! I know that Africa used to mean just the coastal part from present day Tunisia to Middle Algeria (to the Chelf River), less than 1% of what it means today.

[@rebeccareed3074]

one day before my english language exam.....WHY DIDNT I KNOW ABOUT THIS EARLIER?!!?!

[@thelingspace]

I don't know! We've been here for a while. Glad you found us now, though! ^_^

[@thelingspace]

LLcoolJc77 Sorry for the delay in answering your comment! It came in during our hiatus, so. ^^; The books that I've looked at before for the history of Japanese have been Samuel Martin's The Japanese Language through Time, and Bjarke Frellesvig's A History of the Japanese Language. A lot of the focus in these are on changes in grammar and phonology, but there may be lexical discussion as well! Hope these help, and thanks for the kind words. ^_^

[@RippleQM]

thanks for this awesome channel and all the valuable information you're providing :) Keep it up!

[@thelingspace]

Ripples Glad you're getting something out of it! We'll do our best to keep it going. ^_^

[@GregSanders]

In learning about how words shift meaning over time, I was fascinated to discover that weakening was common (awesome and fantastic are used as examples) but that strengthening really wasn't (although I can think of rare exceptions like decimated). The mechanism for this, hyperbole, seems straightforward. But I'd guess it also means that we do slowly lose some of our more intense terms over time. I guess we're reliant on neologisms, words from other languages, and less commonly used terms if we want to say something that has been diluted by exaggeration.

[@thelingspace]

Greg Sanders Thanks for the comment, and good to see you here again! You're right that we've lost a bunch of terms over time to weakening, and without strengthening being a thing, we have to shift other things around. And you correctly note a couple of these: think like borrowing "uber" from German, for example. Or the multitude of slangy ways you can say something is great, depending on your dialect - maybe you can say it is wicked, or sick, etc. But yeah, we do have to promote other words to be as superlative once we've worn the ones we had down. But we manage to make it work. ^_^

[@squigoo]

Example of strengthening from Rocky Horror: COLUMBIA: (about Rocky) He's okay! FRANKENFURTER: Okay!? I think we can do better than that! Also, Chinese 不錯 bú cuò literally means "no mistake/not bad", but it's used to mean "pretty good" (a bit like English "not bad").

[@thelingspace]

+squigoo These are interesting examples, but I don't think they really qualify as strengthening! The Rocky Horror one seems to treat "okay" as if it's actually not that great - if they can do better than okay, then okay is not super. And for the Chinese example, "not bad" in English isn't particularly strong, nor is "pretty good" - I wouldn't really look at a phrase in another language as being particularly strong if that's the comparison point. I don't want to say that strengthening is impossible - it could happen! But it's definitely hard to come up with convincing examples.

[@kimokimo6011]

That's really helpful 👍 thank you

[@zhangxinyi8997]

It's really helpful and the way of teaching is more interesting than my teacher's. :P .Lol...sooo glad to found out this channel and thanks for the information that you're delivering :D

[@thelingspace]

Zhang Xinyi Thanks! Glad to be able to help. ^_^

[@KathyTrithardt]

It was nice (meaning agreeable, not foolish) to meet you at VidCon. I look forward to watching the rest of your videos.

[@thelingspace]

Kathy Trithardt It was very good meeting you, as well! Thanks for the nice comment. Hope to hear more from you! ^_^

[@KathyTrithardt]

***** I will try to think of intelligent responses to your videos as I watch them.​

[@thelingspace]

Kathy Trithardt We will try to think of intelligent answers to your responses! ^_^

[@kimokimo6011]

Having this presentation in written from would be great 😃👍

[@Better_Planet]

tuonane tena, thank you for using Swahili language, for that i subscribed

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

...Once again: "literally" and "figuratively" are antonyms. "Literally" does not mean "not literally" any more than the "dying" of "I'm dying of thirst" means "a metaphor". Interpreting the metaphor "My head literally exploded" as the literal statement "My head figuratively exploded" is equivalent to interpreting "I'm dying of thirst" as "I am a metaphor of thirst". The word "literally" is *used* figuratively, it is not used *to mean* "figuratively". The same figure of speech has long since become the standard usage of "really" and "very", which both originally meant something similar to what the word "literally" means in modern English.

[@thelingspace]

+notoriouswhitemoth Yeah, you're right that "literally" and "figuratively" shouldn't be conflated. I think the larger point still stands about "literally" undergoing weakening, though. It used to have a requirement that what it's modifying actually happened, and now that requirement has been waived, in favour of being an emphatic - maybe stronger (at least in my sense) than "really" or "very", but still weaker than before. The shift is the same, even if the definition we've cited here might not be the most accurate one for usage.

[@squigoo]

+notoriouswhitemoth except that's all lies because that doesn't reflect how people use the word. not judging but i think your dictionary might be out of date 👀 tbh i don't think "literally" means "figuratively" either, I think its meaning and usage is very similar to German ungelogen, which means "no lie" and is used as an intensifyer. and this is similar to literally- it literally means "by the letter". so when you use it, it's like you're saying that the listener shouldn't assume that you mean anything but exactly what you're saying. this use has been extended to instances of hyperbole where you actually don't mean LITERALLY what you are saying, but the feeling is genuine.

[@jamesestrella5911]

Auto antonym, contronym or antagonym.

[@Poppop-xl1jl]

Have you guys already got a plan for all future episodes? How far ahead have you planned?

[@thelingspace]

Pop2323pop We do have a long list of episode topics we'd like to do at some point, which at this point stands well over 100. But we don't usually specifically plan more than 4-5 episodes (i.e. a month to six weeks) out at a time, so we have flexibility for what we feel like doing. Thanks for the question! ^_^

[@emilyt9966]

love the lady rainicorn fluff :)

[@lenamuch]

Hey! can I ask you a question? How does semantic shift relate to Language Acquisition?

[@brbosen]

One connection semantic shift has with language acquisition is simply in how vocabulary is taught. Language books (dictionaries, grammar books, vocabulary, etc.) are ALL playing catch-up; they timestamp language at a certain point and make an attempt to document it so it can be taught/learned. However, language changes faster than books can keep up. So, it is possible (or likely) that a language-learner will come across vocabulary that is outdated both in definition/meaning (semantics) as well as how it is used (pragmatics).

[@Frahamen]

"Deer" actually still means any animal in German and Dutch. With a slight spelling change of course, "Tiere" in German, "Dier" in Dutch but the pronunciation is practically the same.

[@thelingspace]

+Frahamen Yeah, that's true. Just because a word shifts in one language doesn't mean it'll shift anywhere else. Sort of like how in Japanese, アルバイト [aɾɯbaito] means a part-time job, though in German, it's still just "work." ^_^

[@DrMcCoy]

IIRC, that's what happened to "gift" as well. In German, "gift" has now, exclusively, the meaning of "poison", while English (which, I assume, got the word from its Germanic roots) retained its usage as an innocent present.

[@dianedavidson5283]

We use "throne" for "toilet." :) Where's Joe? On the throne.

[@thelingspace]

+Diane Davidson True! I think that's a pretty common additional meaning for "throne" at this point. My guess is that one even gets used more, by a lot of people. ^_^

[@josephnorman6155]

Joe mama

[@justthabi]

Brilliant!

[@thelingspace]

Thanks!

[@a1738k]

What would you(pl)>you(sg,pl) be? How about honey/brown > bear?

[@SparkySywer]

I describe thing in litote all the time. Something that is very exaggerated I might say is a bit exaggerated, for example.

[@thelingspace]

+SparkySywer Thanks for the comment! Yeah, that kind of usage definitely occurs sometimes. But I don't think that we see the general usage of something like "a bit" to mean 'a lot" enough to really shift the meaning of a word completely, such that we'd get strengthening. Mostly, when people use "a bit", they still mean "not very much", so it's not really getting shifted overall, the way a lot of the other examples have changed. So I don't think it really goes against what we said here. ^_^

[@MarcelloSevero]

I really think that from the comments on this video there are simply too many examples of strengthening to say that strengthening is "not really a thing." It might be rarer than weakening, but there's no denying its existence.

[@jamesestrella5911]

When it comes to the word, ‘tolerate’, Greg Koukl would like to have a word with you. Strengthening does exist, unfortunately in this case.

[@reeverfan3729]

what are other examples of weakening?

[@Waitakeredame]

Not quite right on several points. This is just one: meat (n.) Middle English mēte, from Old English mete "food, nourishment, sustenance" (paired with drink), "item of food; animal food, fodder," also "a meal, repast," from Proto-Germanic *mati (source also of Old Frisian mete, Old Saxon meti, Old Norse matr, Old High German maz, Gothic mats "food," 'Meal' is interesting because it mean a grain - cornmwal, wheatmeal etc and now we uses it for any repast. 'Rice' has a similar etymology, meaning, of course the grain but now, in many Asian countries you will be invited to 'take rice', even if you're going for a burger, as that too now means anything to eat.

[@maillardsbearcat]

Wait, so how does this happen though? If one guy starts saying something differently, how does everyone else in the country jump on board?

[@Gracebrokenmastermended]

5:30

[@teacherdkennedy]

I first heard the term pejoration in a woman's studies class in college, and it was paired with of feminine language. How hussy originally meant housewife and came to mean prostitute. How madam came to mean, uh, prostitute. Is pejoration usually political in this way, or does it shift also in regard to neutral categories?

[@thelingspace]

Diana Kennedy Thanks for the question! I'd like to say no, but I think it may depend on how much you want to ascribe to politics. Like, say, "villain," which was just a town-dweller, and then became a scoundrel, or "peasant," which just meant, say, a farmer, but if someone says you have peasant tastes, they mean you're unsophisticated. I think the "artificial" example, which used to mean crafted with skill, but now means unnatural, also isn't really political, but how far does it go? Ultimately, pejoration as a category will have some things that are definitely political, and some that I'd say are a reach, but I'd come down on saying there are a bunch of examples that are more neutral than anything else. ^_^

[@teacherdkennedy]

The Ling Space Although your first two examples seem rather class-based, don't they?

[@thelingspace]

Diana Kennedy Yep! But interestingly, in opposite directions - people in towns are bad people, and people in the country are uncivilized. So yeah, there is still a political dimension to those. But the artificial one doesn't really seem to be, to me. I guess when it comes to what we value and don't value, a lot of that will get tangled up in politics, one way or another.

[@teacherdkennedy]

The Ling Space It would be interesting to see when the two shifts happened, because in Shakespeare's time, the town was loud and obnoxious and the countryside was where the real gentlemen stayed, in their aristocratic quiet (I think I learned this reading Johnson's Epicone) but at some point the Big City became the place of wealth and the farmers/peasants were, you know, poor and low-class (rather than high-class/upper-class). Hmm... You are right though, you start getting a fuzzy line where everything can be political...

[@thelingspace]

Diana Kennedy Well, I think the larger point stands, but this is what I get for not doing my fact-checking for the comments - it appears villain isn't derived from ville, as I'd previously thought, but in fact from vilain, someone assigned to a villa, or basically a serf. So of course, since those people weren't bound to chivalrous codes, they could be scoundrels. Just wanted to correct that! I do think, though, that the question of amelioration and pejoration often do have to do with what we value and devalue, so yeah, from certain viewpoints, most of these changes could potentially be thought of as political.

[@MomentswithMahnoor]

What is the semantic shift of the word "guy"?

[@frankharr9466]

I suspect "literally" isn't an example of weakening. I think what it is, is that it's how you say "very" when discussing a figurative turn of phrase. For example, one hour late to lunch: "I'm starving". Six hours late to luch: "I am literally starving!".

[@roneldell5137]

And now, the word 'meat' has another totally different meaning nowadays

[@DrMcCoy]

One example for a kind of strengthening might be "boner"? Unless I'm wrong, it used to be just an embarrassing mistake (I seem to recall seeing a newspaper article about someone's boner/mistake at some sports), but in modern usage the word is somewhat vulgar now. I'd say you probably wouldn't find it in a newspaper anymore, at least.

[@Amphibiot]

Controversial subject follows and i dont want to come across as racist. I am talking about the word itself. Nothing more. The word negro. It wasn't a racist label before, it is now. Black is now the new negro. I'm still young enough to hopefully see the day when [insert new word for south of sahara ethnic origin] becomes the new black.

[@vakusdrake3224]

I forget what that's called, but there's a sort of phenomenon where the PC word/phrase for something ends up being used as an insult and thus people pick a new PC word. See the many things used to refer to people with disabilities and marginalized groups that are now never used except as uncouth insults.

[@larsr7111]

i will agree with you that there are such processes of semantic shifts, but often due to the shifting tension to the word. Examples of this I will say is words of a sexual nature that used to have a different meaning, like: boner, ejaculate, stimuli etc. We've had a shift to be able to describe something we don't like adressing directly, so we find softer words in order to replace them with. What eventually happens is that we make the softer word "stronger".

[@jamesestrella5911]

@@vakusdrake3224 like the word “cretin”

[@Pakanahymni]

The Finnish word for "to burn" used to mean "to swallow". Also somehow I knew that "silly" was going to be the example for pejoration.

[@thelingspace]

Pakanahymni Thanks for the comment! That's quite a shift. And yeah, silly fit the theme well, I think. The runner-up was artificial, which used to mean skillfully crafted. Artifice still kind of has that carefully made connotation to it, but now artificial's pretty much gone over to the negative side. Nobody is really thinking of artificial sweeteners as being put together with great skill.

[@Pakanahymni]

The Ling Space The shift looks enormous but it's not that hard to explain. Fire *consumes* in English as well, and we know that some things are not for human *consumption*... you get the idea, haha.

[@thelingspace]

Pakanahymni Interesting! This makes me wonder a bit about if there's a connection between swallowing things that taste fiery (e.g. alcohol) to connect burn and swallow, too. But this is the thing about etymology - it's easy to come up with hypotheses that sound interesting, but often, they're not actually correct. Is there a Finnish etymological dictionary to look at for these things?

[@Pakanahymni]

The Ling Space I actually learned the aforementioned at university where I did some finno-ugric studies, but there is an etymological dictionary for Finnish called The Origins of Finnish Words - Etymological Dictionary.

[@thelingspace]

Pakanahymni Cool! Unsurprisingly, it doesn't appear to be at either of the university libraries I have access to, but it's good to know it's out there. ^_^

[@divicool72]

I's surprised you didnt mention a relatively recent example which is very common - "gay"...what kind of semantic shift is that?

[@CeoLogJM]

I would presume that it's just a regular shift from meaning "Happy"(I think?) to "Homosexual". Although I think that it's a rather modern change of the word, mosty because Homosexuals look Happy overall, I guess. I mean, When I imagine someone who is gay, they are mostly quite the feminine and happy individual.

[@divicool72]

I thought it would have started out as a euphemism.

[@thelingspace]

Divi So this is actually a fairly complicated question, in that gay is another of those words that's undergone a number of changes over its history. Gay started out as a borrowing from Old French, meaning 'joyous and carefree', back in the late 1300s. By the time it got to Middle English, it had already started to gain a bit of a connotation for lewdness (even perhaps in Chaucer!), but definitely by the 1630s, it had that meaning for sure. Over time, this meaning became stronger, and while it still maintained the 'carefree' reading, by the 1890s, it had undergone pejoration to get the meaning of 'promiscuous', such that a "gay house" was a brothel. The meaning of gay broadened to include 'homosexual' around the 1920 or 1930s, and there was a period of time where the two meanings co-existed, so that a "gay man" could be a guy who was sleeping with a sizable number of women, or with other men. By the mid-1950s, the current meaning of 'homosexual' became solidified, and the word then underwent narrowing to lose the sense of promiscuity. And would that we could leave it there, but unfortunately, from around 2000 there's been a pejoration of "gay" in some groups to mean things that are bad or stupid. Even though we don't approve of that usage, we can't really leave it out of our discussion of semantic shifts of "gay", because ignoring things you don't like isn't science. It's not really common for the same word to change meaning so many times over the course of 100 years or so, but it happens! And so "gay" is an interesting example. Thanks for the question! ^_^

[@divicool72]

The Ling Space Thank you for the answer! How interesting!

[@felipevasconcelos6736]

+‫ויאמר סבבה!‬‎ I'm homosexual and definitely not merry or joyful. And I don't know many homosexuals that look prominently gay (in the old meaning). Actually I have no idea about how was that stereotype born.

[@piceatall6962]

not judging :-)

[@chengyyun]

is it just me or does everytime he says "t" it sounds like a "ch"

[@chengyyun]

for example 0:01 "meat"

[@ireneaglyamova81]

Oh, could you speak a little bit quicker

[@ankitchaudhary3735]

He is actually speaking fast only in respect to non native speakers. But I am glad his examples helped understand the larger portion of sematic drift . However somehow you are right we need to become little faster in order to understand better.

[@wktorzjawinski2052]

*Settings section on speed od video*