Historical Development of Word Meaning – Semantic Change

«In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.» It could be argued that originally there was one word, from which all others have sprung. The origins of language will never be known, but the first language probably had a vocabulary of a few hundred words, providing a rich enough vocabulary for a primitive people who had few materials and fewer abstract concepts. Many of the words of the first languages had very broad senses of meaning.instance, the word inspire is from the Latin inspirare, which literally means «to breathe into». Its archaic meaning is «to breathe life into», with newer meanings like «to be the cause of», «to elicit», «to move to action», «to exalt» and «to guide by divine influence». Now if a minister were to speak of Adam as dust inspired, he might mean by that not just that the dust is having life breathed into it (the original etymological meaning), but also that the dust is being exalted and given form, that it is being moved to action, and that it is being divinely guided (these are the metaphorical or extended meanings). In other words, this minister might not mean just one of the definitions of inspired but all of them simultaneously.extended meanings are branches that have split off from the trunk, and our hypothetical minister has simply traced them back to the root.you seek to create a language from an earlier time, you should probably develop a small vocabulary, with it words having much more overlapping of meaning than the vocabularies of modern languages. Imagine a word spiratholmos - an ancient ancestor to Latin inspirare - meaning «wind, breath, voice, spirit.» A speaker who used the word spiratholmos would regard the wind in the trees as the breath of the earth, the voice of God, the spirit animating each of us.is different way of looking at words, and prompted Tolkien to write, «There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.» What Tolkien's elves might have expressed in one word, resonant with meaning, Tolkien's diminutive man cannot express at all.change can be viewed dispassionately as a natural process, but it can also be invested with a spiritual significance, as Tolkien and Suffield have done. A model language is an art form and its crafting can even convey this theme of spiritual isolation. As Ronald Suffield wrote, «no word is still the word, but, a loafward has become lord.»are the goddy tawdry maudlin for they shall christgeewhiz bow down before him: bedead old men, priest and prester, babeling a pitterpatternoster: no word is still the word, but, a loafward has become lord.Suffield, «The Tenth Beatitude»subtle poem by the English philologist Ronald Suffield is actually written at two levels. For Suffield intends that the reader hold in mind not just the current meanings of these words but the original meanings as well. For the meaning of a word changes over time. The example everyone knows is gay, which originally meant «merry», but because some people are a little too merry came to mean «wanton», and because some people are a little too wanton came to mean «homosexual», which is the sense almost exclusively used now.model language that you develop will have words that are descended from words with quite different meanings. Some of the words used in Ronald Suffield's poem, The Tenth Beatitude, will be used to demonstrate how words change through time.is the process by which a word's meaning worsens or degenerates, coming to represent something less favorable than it originally did. Most of the words in Suffield's poem have undergone pejoration.instance, the word silly begins Suffield's poem and meant in Old English times «blessed», which is why Suffield calls his poem a beatitude (Christ's beatitudes begin with «blessed are the…»). How did a word meaning «blessed» come to mean «silly»? Well, since people who are blessed are often innocent and guileless, the word gradually came to mean «innocent». And some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they haven't the brains to be anything else. And some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they knowingly reject opportunities for temptation. In either case, since the more worldly-wise would take advantage of their opportunities, the innocents must therefore be foolish, which of course is the current primary meaning of the word silly.word goddy in the poem is a metaplasmus (artful misspelling) of gaudy. The word gaudy was derived from the Latin word gaudium, «joy», which was applied to praying (as a type of rejoicing). Because the most common prayers in Middle English times were the prayers of the rosary, Middle English gaude came to be associated with the rosary and came to mean «an ornamenta