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God entered English when the language still had a system of grammatical gender.The word and its cognates were initially neutral but underwent transition when their speakers converted to Christianity, "as a means of distinguishing the personal God of the Christians from the impersonal divine powers acknowledged by pagans."
After a word enters a language, its meaning can change as through a shift in the valence of its connotations. As an example, when "villain" entered English it meant 'peasant' or 'farmhand', but acquired the connotation 'low-born' or 'scoundrel', and today only the negative use survives. Thus 'villain' has undergone pejoration.
Biblical languages are any of the languages employed in the original writings of the Bible.Some debate exists as to which language is the original language of a particular passage, and about whether a term has been properly translated from an ancient language into modern editions of the Bible.
Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage.
Augustine addresses the issue in The City of God. [2] While not explicit, the implication of there being but one human language prior to the Tower of Babel's collapse is that the language, which was preserved by Heber and his son Peleg, and which is recognized as the language passed down to Abraham and his descendants, is the language that would have been used by Adam.
In Judaism and Christianity, it is unclear whether the language used by God to address Adam was the language of Adam, who as name-giver (Genesis 2:19) used it to name all living things, or if it was a different divine language. In Islam, Arabic is the language in which God revealed the final revelation.
The word Shinto was created by combining two kanji: "神" shin meaning god (the character can also be read as "kami" in Japanese) and "道" tō meaning Tao ("way" or "path" in a philosophical sense). Thus, Shinto means "the way of the gods."
The use of other analogies may then be used to determine if any one model of God is abused or improperly applied. [18] It is proposed that analogy is also present in everyday discourses. For example, when a speaker uses the word square, the speakers may well use it to refer to an object that is approximately square rather than a genuine square ...