Semantic Change - Broadening - Part 2

Words constantly change meaning. It's something inevitable that happens due to usage. This process is called semantic change or shift in meaning. I posted a general explanation about this previously, and now I'm going to focus on one of the ways a word can change its meaning: broadening.

Broadening is basically a process in which a word used to refer to something specific goes on to refer to something more general. Its meaning broadens, widens, becomes more general.

In my previous post on semantic broadening, I used several brand names as examples. Names such as Kleenex or Velcro are commonly used nowadays not to refer to the specific brand, but to refer to the general object. Other words such as "escalator" or "aspirin", previously brand names, lost their trademarked status and became part of the public domain. This is yet another example of semantic broadening, and in the case of brands, "genericide."

Here are some other examples of broadening:

Guy

Procession of a guy.

This word nowadays refers to any male person. It originates from Guido (Guy) Fawkes, the most famous of a group of conspirators who attempted to blow up the English Houses of Parliament on November 5, 1605. This was known as the Gunpowder Plot. You might recall a little rhyme from the movie V for Vendetta mentioning this.

After Fawkes's trial and execution, Londoners began celebrating the thwarted plot each November 5 with bonfires, fireworks, and the burning of an effigy, which was called a guy (but usually represented the Pope).

During the 19th century, the word "guy" was used to refer to any oddly dressed person. In America, the word lost its pejorative connotation and came to mean any man, and that's the use we give the word today.

Ezio Auditore is the most
charismatic assassin ever!

Assassin

The origin of this word is as twisted as you would expect! It seems that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries there was a secretive murder cult which received the name "hashishin" meaning "hashish eaters."

This cult targeted prominent figures and also took money from contract killings. Even though their main goal was to coerce or murder, the group wasn't as bloodthirsty as you'd think. They were highly intelligent and trained killers, known for only inflicting harm on their target. They specifically took care not to harm bystanders or any innocent people who might be nearby.

Because of their assaults were focused on prominent figures, the words "assassin" and "assassinate" nowadays refer to killings of a major public figure. If an ordinary everyday person is killed, that is murder, not assassination.


Dog

The Old English word "docga" (or "dogga") is still a linguistic mystery. At the time, the word "docga" was used to refer to a specific breed of canine, but once it entered the language it gained popularity to the point that it forced out the Old English "hund" (which gave us today's "hound") and went on to mean any sort of dog disregarding its breed.

Thing

Is there a more general word than "thing"? Well, in Old English (it was "þing") the word referred to a council, meeting, assembly or discussion. It's incredible how generalized this word has become and how forgotten its origins are!

Shit

Oops! Sorry for cursing! No, not really. I honestly don't have any taboos when it comes to language because the word itself isn't inherently right or wrong; its the connotations we humans give it. So, let's talk about shit.

Originally, the word referred to fecal matter, and it still does today. However, its sense has been broadened. Have you ever heard phrases such as:

"I've had enough of her shit."
"I have so much shit to to today."

I'm sure most of you must have. In the first example, the word "shit" might refer to "problems" or "issues" or "drama" or "complaints." It's very general! In the second example, "shit" is also immensely general, meaning "things."

What's happening to the word "shit"? It's undergoing a process of generalization or broadening, but it's also on the verge of losing any meaning! When a word becomes so, so general, it risks losing its full meaning and becoming nothing more than a function word (used to express grammatical or structural relationships in a sentence) or an affix (a word element: prefix, suffix...). This process is called bleaching.



Resources

http://etmlbristol.wikia.com/wiki/Semantic_widening

http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/broadenterm.htm

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/12/where-did-the-word-assassin-come-from/

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=thing&allowed_in_frame=0

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dog&allowed_in_frame=0

http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/broadenterm.htm

http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/IJES/IJES-07-0-000-14-Web/IJES-07-3-000-14-ABST-PDF/IJES-7-3-711-14-338-Kaburise-O/IJES-7-3-711-14-338-Kaburise-O-Tx[32].pdf

Semantic Change - Broadening Part 1 - Brand Names

Semantics! Yay!

Oh, come on! It isn't that bad... Here's a comic strip to get you in the mood.

Semantic change (also called shift in meaning) is a process in which a word changes its meaning over time. It actually happens a lot more than you'd expect! There are many words which we happily toss around in our everyday conversations which started out with a completely different meaning. Let's have a look at a few words that underwent a form of semantic change called broadening.

Also called widening or generalization, the process of broadening a word's semantics means that it takes on a more general sense.

Perhaps the most obvious use of broadening is related to brand names. Over the years, we've grown accustomed to using a specific brand name to refer to a general idea or item. Can you find all the brand names here?

When Julie finished her shift at the mall, she had a massive headache and really needed an aspirin. As she got on the escalator, she remembered she had some in her backpack. She checked all the pockets--even the ones shut with Velcro--but the only things she could find were some Kleenex, ChapStick and Band-Aids.

Easy, right? The brand names are capitalized: Velcro (registered name for "hook-and-loop fastener"), Kleenex (registered name for "facial tissue" or "handkerchief"), Band-Aid (registered name for "adhesive bandage") and ChapStick (registered name for "lip balm." Note the capitalized "s" in the middle).

That looks weird, doesn't it? Especially "ChapStick"! I'm so accustomed to using it as a generic name that seeing it capitalized is a bit unnerving. But have a glimpse at the official website and, yup, it's a registered trademark.

However, there are two more trademarked names in that segment: aspirin and escalator. But why aren't they capitalized?

Well, it turns out that these words lost their trademark status.

Let's begin with the easy one:

The word "escalator" was trademarked by Otis Elevator Co. in 1900, but in the 1950 case Haughton Elevator Co. v. Seeberger, the company lost its trademark rights because the court declared it had allowed the word to become generic, meaning nothing more than "a moving staircase." Thus, the company lost its trademark and "escalator" officially became part of the public domain.

The word "aspirin" was trademarked by the well-known German pharmaceutical Bayer in the year 1899. However, at the end of World War One, many of the company's assets and trademarks were confiscated and other companies jumped at the opportunity to use the highly acclaimed name. Bayer, however, still holds trademark in over eighty countries, including Germany, Canada and Mexico.

By the way, did you know that Bayer had also trademarked "heroin"? The name of the drug is actually diacetylmorphine. However, Bayer created its brand name Heroin from the Greek word "hero" in order to associate "heroic" traits to the medicine. As you might have guessed, the company also eventually lost trademark rights over this word.

These last two examples (three if we count "heroin") of semantic broadening are also clear examples of a phenomenon called brand genericide--when a brand name becomes a common name. Otis Elevator Co. failed to properly protect its trademark over the word "escalator", and Bayer pretty much had its trademark stripped from "aspirin" after WWI.

Other companies are currently at risk of losing their trademark this way, for example "Google" with regards to the common phrase "let's google this", meaning "let's look this up on the internet."

Brand name broadening has happened many times, and probably will continue to happen throughout the decades. It's a form of dying of success: the trademarked name becomes part of your day-to-day until you disassociate it from its source (the company) and use the name solely to refer to the item. Once we've reached this point of semantic broadening or generalization, court claims can be put forward to declare the word public domain--and other companies can jump at the opportunity to use a well-known word.

So, it turns out semantic change isn't something that only affects us nerds! The evolution of language has deep and long-lasting effects on society, and phenomena such as shifts in meaning have, as we've just seen, even been dealt with in court cases.

In my next post I'll give you some examples of broadening which affected regular words we use every day.

Resources

http://etmlbristol.wikia.com/wiki/Semantic_widening

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blaspirin.htm

http://www.bayer.com/en/history.aspx

http://ndrichardson.com/blog/2012/09/11/brand-genericide-when-brand-names-become-commonplace/

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27026704

http://www.businessinsider.com/yes-bayer-promoted-heroin-for-children-here-are-the-ads-that-prove-it-2011-11?op=1

What is Semantic Change?

Let's delve into linguistics! It was one of my favorite subjects at university, but sadly it only lasted one year. (I studied Translation and Interpreting--English, Spanish, Catalan, French and Arabic.)

More specifically, let's take a look at one of the main branches on linguistics: semantics. Semantics is the study of meaning. We can look at semantics from a logical point of view (logical semantics), and study sense and reference and presupposition and implication, or we can study lexical semantics, analyzing the meaning of words and the relationships between them. We can also study computational semantics, which deals with how to implement programs to process natural language.


The meaning associated to a word is susceptible to change over time--to the point that it can actually mean something completely different! This process is called semantic change or shift in meaning. This is a common event in all languages and it simply implies that communication is forever undergoing evolution. If a language can't adapt to its users, it stops being useful!

An example of this phenomenon appeared in an earlier post, where I commented on the shift of meaning for "nimrod." Nimrod is the biblical name of the great-grandson of Noah, an expert hunter and ruler of Shinar, but thanks to some general wackiness the word is now synonymous to "idiot." This type of shift, which turned a name into an insult, is called pejoration.

In the following months, I'll be posting about some interesting shifts in meaning. Just for the more curious readers, here are some of the proposed types of semantic change.

- Metaphor - We've seen several examples of metaphors which have now become the common term in medicine. For example, the Latin musculus, meaning "little mouse" has given us muscle. But metaphors can be much more recent. For example, and let's look at the same furry rodent: the word mouse refers to the animal, but (given its physical similarity) it also to a computer device.

- Metonymy - Instead of calling something by its own name, we use an associated term to refer to it. For example, in the expression "The pen is mightier than the sword", words such as "pen" and "sword" are substituting their associated ideas "writing" and "force."

- Specialization of meaning - Also known as narrowing. A general word becomes more specific. For example, the Old English word mete used to refer to food. Nowadays, the word is spelled "meat" and its meaning has been narrowed down to "food which is animal flesh."

- Generalization of meaning - Also known as broadening. A specific word becomes more general. This occurs with famous brand names. For example, the brand name Kleenex is commonly used as a general term for "handkerchief."

- Synecdoche - There are various types of synecdoche. This figure of speech uses part of something to represent the whole, for example: "they hired some extra hands." Here, the word "hands" is substituting "people." It can also use the whole to represent just part of something, for example: "The police arrived five minutes later." Here, we can safely assume that only a few officers arrived, and not the entire police force.

- Antiphrasis - This figure of speech uses a word to mean the opposite of what it usually means. It's basically used for humorous or sarcastic effects, for example: "So you dropped your keys down the well? You're so smart!"

- Auto-antonymy - Also called contronymy, this technique involves changing the sense and concept of a word to mean its complementary opposite. For example, the word "dust" can mean to add dust to something, or to clean dust off of something.

These are just a few of the linguistic processes involved in semantic change. Over the next few weeks, I'll post some specific examples of words that have undergone a transformation. Some of them are evident, such as brand names (using the brand "Kleenex" to refer to a tissue), but others not so much... I'm sure we're all in for a surprise!

Hey, Nimrod! - Etymology and Shifts in Meaning

"Hey, nimrod! How's it going?"

That wasn't very nice, was it? Chances are that if you greet someone like that you might just get a punch in the face, or at least a sour look. However, "nimrod" wasn't always an insult--it is actually a biblical name.


According to the Bible, Nimrod was the great-grandson of Noah, and the first person to play a large active role after the great flood. He was an expert hunter and the ruler of Shinar. Shinar is a biblical geographical region in Mesopotamia which has been historically linked to Babylonia. In fact, "The Land of Nimrod" is used in the Book of Micah (Micah 5:6) as a synonym for Mesopotamia or Assyria.

Although the Bible doesn't clearly state this, it is common belief in both Hebrew and Christian traditions that Nimrod was the leader who oversaw construction of the Tower of Babel. This connection was made mainly because the location of the tower fell in the heart of his kingdom.

With all this information, I can assume that Nimrod was considered an important and powerful man in biblical history. He was a mighty warrior and skilled hunter, the ruler of Shinar... So how did his name come to mean "idiot" or "inept"? You won't believe the answer...

In a Looney Tunes cartoon featuring Bugs’s fumbling nemesis Elmer Fudd as a hunter on the rabbit’s trail, the carrot-chomping coney sardonically refers to Fudd as a nimrod — insulting him by derisively comparing him to a biblical personage renowned for his hunting skills. Apparently, later generations of Looney Tunes fans who hadn’t kept up with their Scripture picked up on Bugs’s attitude without understanding the ironic allusion, and the word acquired a new meaning, while its original sense faded into the background.[1]

So, it seems we can thank Looney Tunes for this (unintentional) shift in meaning. Basically, Bugs Bunny's use of sarcasm equates to him saying something like: "Nice going, Einstein!"--where "Einstein" is used as a sarcastic form of "genius." As the name Nimrod was not well-known among its viewers, the meaning shifted over time.

However, just how true is this allegation? There are those who believe Bugs Bunny wasn't being sarcastic when he called Elmer Fudd "Nimrod." There are those who believe Bugs was using "Nimrod" directly as a synonym for "idiot," much in the same way Americans use "Benedict Arnold" for "traitor."

The reasoning is simple: let's suppose it was Nimrod who oversaw construction of the Tower of Babel. Some interpretations see Nimrod as an arrogant tyrant who ordered the massive tower to reach the heavens and make a name for the people. Some describe him as a rebel who defied God by constructing the gargantuan monument. The endeavor didn't end well...

Up until that point, the bible claims all humans spoke the same language, but God decided to put an end to the Tower of Babel absurdity by causing people to speak different languages and scattering them over the globe. This event is known as the "confusion of tongues."

So who was responsible for all this confusion and scattering? Nimrod, the ruler, of course. He dared defy God, and he was an idiot for doing so. Thus, some believe the Looney Tunes script purposefully used the name Nimrod as an insult--no sarcasm needed.

Which is the true explanation for this shift in meaning? We may never know...


Extra:

By the way, I would also like to point out that other interpretations of the Bible see the Tower of Babel as a cradle of civilization, and the "confusion of tongues" not as a punishment, but as a way of explaining cultural differences around the world. This interpretation immediately reminds me of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, where the author gives interesting explanations of how some things came to be (how the elephant got its trunk, how the camel got its hump, etc.).


Resources

[1] Daily Writing Tips - Accidental Shifts in Meaning

http://christianity.about.com/od/biblestorysummaries/p/towerofbabel.htm

http://biblehub.com/topical/n/nimrod.htm