Semantic Change
--is frequently (apparently) unmotivated; it is frequently poetic: words change by taking on meanings that are metaphoric, metonymic, suggestive--
words can completely reverse their meanings--
OE wix (modern spelling "with") means against
Fr. pas ("not, none") originally meant "pace, step" (a measurable something)
The most common kind of semantic change for nouns and verbs may be a shift in the place a word occupies in a hierarchy of concepts.
--A word can go from meaning a class of objects (or actions) to meaning a subclass or individual;
--or from meaning an individual or subclass to meaning a class.
OE "deor" (ModE "deer") meant "animal" (cf. Ger. "Tier") but now means a specific animal. We have imported a latin word ("animal") for the old general function. ["Beast" has been narrowed in meaning to connote something "bestial" or monstrous.]
OE "steorfan" (ModE "starve") meant "die" (cf. Ger. "sterben"). In ME, Northern "die" (fr. ON "deyjan") replaced "sterven" and narrowed the function of "starve" to dying of hunger.
OE "swefn" (ME "sweven") meant "dream" [OE "dream" "joy, bliss, pleasure, sublimity] "dream" became narrowed (and slightly transferred) in meaning to mean things you see while sleeping-- OE and ME "blisse"
meant "sensual pleasure," "immediate gratification" and has been transferred to a more sublime connotation]
OE "dom" (ModE "doom") meant "judgment, thought, consideration, reckoning")--cf. ModE "deem" "Doom" has become narrowed in meaning to mean "fate" --
OE "dog" was a breed of dog; OE "hund" (cf. Ger. Hund) was the more general word. The two have traded places, so that "hound" is now a subclass.
METAPHOR is an important source of semantic change. It involves a sliding of category rather than a broadening or narrowing--
file, paper, page, sheet, dial, folder, notepad
BORROWING or IMPORTATION
Imports change the associations of "native" words--
OE "meat" meant "solid food for people," "the edible part of a foodstuff" cf. nutmeats ... OE "foda" meant "food for anything" --cf. fodder; any kind of sustenance.
During ME, lots of French food words came in and disrupted an older English system of food words-- French words for OE "flesh" (cf. Ger. "Fleisch") (mutton, pork, beef, veal, poultry) were imported. "Fruit" was a French word for one kind of OE "meat"; "vegetable" was another; another Fr. word was "victuals" other Fr. words: "grain, cereal," -- what happened was a category shift for the word "meat" to take on the meaning of OE "flesh"--there are still remnants of the older meaning in phrases like "sweetmeats" and in Biblical usage ("meat out of the eater")
For more detailed and complicated examples of specific semantic change,
click here.