Word meaning complete change

Most scholars distinguish
between the terms development
of meaning
(when a
new meaning and the one on the basis of which it is formed coexist in
the semantic structure of the word, as in mill,
carriage, etc.)
and change
of meaning
(when the
old meaning is completely replaced by the new one, as in the noun
meat which
in Old English had the general meaning of “food” but in Modern
English is no longer used in that sense and has instead developed the
meaning “flesh of animals used as a food product”).

The first group of causes of
development of new meanings is traditionally termed historical
or
extra-linguistic.

Different
kinds of changes in a nation’s social life, in its culture,
knowledge, technology, arts lead to gaps appearing in the vocabulary
which beg to be filled. Newly created objects, new concepts and
phenomena must be named. Languages are powerfully affected by social,
political, economic, cultural and technical change. The influence of
those factors upon linguistic phenomena is studied by
sociolinguistics. It shows that social factors can influence even
structural features of linguistic units: terms of science, for
instance, have a number of specific features as compared to words
used in other spheres of human activity.

We already know of two ways
for providing new names for newly created concepts: making new words
(word-building) and borrowing foreign ones. One
more way of filling such vocabulary gaps is by applying some old word
to a new object or notion.

The
word being a linguistic realisation of notion, it changes with the
progress of human consciousness. This process is reflected in the
development of lexical meaning. As the human mind achieves an ever
more exact understanding of the world of reality and the objective
relationships that characterise it, the notions become more and more
exact reflections of real things. The history of the social, economic
and political life of the people, the progress of culture and science
bring about changes in notions and things influencing the semantic
aspect of language. For instance, The word space
meant
“extent of time or distance” or “intervening distance”.
Alongside this meaning a new meaning developed “the limitless and
indefinitely great expanse in which all material objects are
located”. The phrase outer
space was
quickly ellipted into space.
Cf.
spacecraft,
space-suit, space travel, etc.

The
extra-linguistic motivation is sometimes obvious, but some cases are
not as straightforward as they may look. The word bikini
may
be taken as an example. Bikini, a very scanty two-piece bathing suit
worn by women, is named after Bikini atoll in the Western Pacific but
not because it was first introduced on some fashionable beach there.
Bikini
appeared at the time when the atomic bomb tests by the US in
the Bikini atoll were fresh in everybody’s memory. The associative
field is emotional referring to the “atomic” shock the first
bikinis produced.

The
tendency to use technical imagery is increasing in every language,
thus the expression to
spark off in chain reaction is
almost international. Live
wire “one
carrying electric current” used figuratively about a person of
intense energy seems purely English, though.

Other
international expressions are black
box and
feed-back.
Black box formerly
a term of aviation and electrical engineering is now used
figuratively to denote any mechanism performing intricate functions
or any unit of which we know the effect but not the components or
principles of action.

Feed-back
a
cybernetic term meaning “the return of a sample of the output of a
system or process to the input, especially with the purpose of
automatic adjustment and control” is now widely used figuratively
meaning “response”.

When the first textile
factories appeared in England, the old word mill
was
applied to these early industrial enterprises. In this way, mill
(a Latin
borrowing of the first century В.
С.)
added a new
meaning to its former meaning “a building in which corn is ground
into flour”. The new meaning was “textile factory”.

A similar case is the word
carriage
which had
(and still has) the meaning “a vehicle drawn by horses”, but,
with the first appearance of railways in England, it received a new
meaning, that of “a railway car”.

The history of English nouns
describing different parts of a theatre may also serve as a good
illustration of how well-established words can be used to denote
newly-created objects and phenomena. The words stalls,
box, pit, circle had
existed for a long time before the first theatres appeared in
England. With their appearance, the gaps in the vocabulary were
easily filled by these widely used words which, as a result,
developed new meanings. It is of some interest to note that the
Ukrainian language found a different way of filling the same gap: in
Ukrainian, all the parts of the theatre are named by borrowed words:
партер,
ложа,
амфітеатр,
бельєтаж.

The
changes of notions and things named go hand in hand. They are
conditioned by changes in the economic, social, political and
cultural history of the people, so that the extralinguistic causes of
semantic change might be conveniently subdivided in accordance with
these. Social relationships are at work in the cases of elevation and
pejoration of meaning where the attitude of the upper classes to
their social inferiors determined the strengthening of emotional tone
among the semantic components of the word.

Sociolinguistics
also teaches that power relationships are reflected in vocabulary
changes. In all the cases of pejoration such as boor,
churl, villain, etc.,
it was the ruling class that imposed evaluation. The opposite is
rarely the case. One example deserves attention though: sir
+
-ly
used
to mean “masterful” and now sirly
means
“rude in a bad-tempered way”.

New meanings can also be developed due to linguistic factors (the
second group of causes).

Linguistically speaking, the
development of new meanings, and also a complete change of meaning,
may be caused through the influence of other words, mostly of
synonyms.

steorfan
Old Eng. ―
to
perish ↔
to die
Scandinavian
borrowing

to starve
→
to die
(or suffer) from hunger.

deor Old
Eng. ―
any
beast ↔
animal borrowed
word

deer
→
a
certain kind of beast (UA. олень).

The noun knave
(О.
Е.
knafa)
suffered
an even more striking change of meaning as a result of collision with
its synonym boy.
Now it has
a pronounced negative evaluative connotation and means “swindler,
scoundrel”.

Why was it that the word
mill —
and not some
other word —
was selected
to denote the first textile factories? There must have been some
connection between the former sense of mill
and the
new phenomenon to which it was applied. And there was
apparently
such a connection. Mills which produced flour, were mainly driven by
water. The textile factories also firstly used water power. So, in
general terms, the meanings of mill,
both the
old and the new one, could be defined as “an establishment using
water power to produce certain goods”. Thus, the first textile
factories were easily associated with mills producing flour, and the
new meaning of mill
appeared
due to this association. In actual fact, all cases of development or
change of meaning are based on some association. In the history of
the word carriage,
the new
travelling conveyance was also naturally associated in people’s minds
with the old one: horse-drawn vehicle →
part of a
railway train. Both these objects were related to the idea of
travelling. The job of both, the horse-drawn carriage and the railway
carriage, is the same: to carry passengers on a journey. So the
association was logically well-founded.

Stalls and
box formed
their meanings in which they denoted parts of the theatre on the
basis of a different type of association. The meaning of the word box
«a
small separate enclosure forming a part of the theatre»
developed on the basis of its former meaning «a rectangular
container used for packing or storing things». The two objects
became associated in the speakers’ minds because boxes in the
earliest English theatres really resembled packing cases. They were
enclosed on all sides and heavily curtained even on the side facing
the audience so as to conceal the privileged spectators occupying
them from curious or insolent stares.

The association on which the
theatrical meaning of stalls
was based
is even more curious. The original meaning was “compartments in
stables or
sheds for the accommodation of animals (e. g. cows,
horses, etc.)”.
There does not seem to be much in common between the privileged and
expensive part of a theatre and stables intended for cows and horses,
unless we take into consideration the fact that theatres in olden
times greatly differed from what they are now. What is now known as
the stalls
was, at
that time, standing space divided by barriers into sections so as to
prevent the enthusiastic crowd from knocking one other down and
hurting themselves. So, there must have been a certain outward
resemblance between theatre stalls and cattle stalls. It is also
possible that the word was first used humorously or satirically in
this new sense.

The process of development
of a new meaning (or a change of meaning) is traditionally termed
transference.

Some scholars mistakenly use
the term transference
of meaning which
is a serious mistake. It is very important to note that in any case
of semantic change it is not the meaning but the word that is being
transferred from one referent onto another (e. g. from a horse-drawn
vehicle onto a railway car). The result of such a transference is the
appearance of a new meaning.

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