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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.
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.
In linguistics, reappropriation, reclamation, or resignification [1] is the cultural process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group. It is a specific form of a semantic change (i.e., change in a word's meaning).
Later studies in the field have further developed and altered Meillet's ideas and have introduced many other examples of grammaticalization. During the second half of the twentieth century, the field of linguistics was strongly concerned with synchronic studies of language change, with less emphasis on historical approaches such as ...
In common usage and linguistics, concision (also called conciseness, succinctness, [1] terseness, brevity, or laconicism) is a communication principle [2] of eliminating redundancy, [3] generally achieved by using as few words as possible in a sentence while preserving its meaning. More generally, it is achieved through the omission of parts ...
It is a normal effect observed in the language of beginner and intermediate language-learners, whether native-speaker children or foreign-speaker adults. Because most natural languages have some irregular forms, moving beyond overregularization is a part of mastering them. Usually, learners' brains move beyond overregularization naturally, as a ...
Mewing is the freshest teen trend driving parents up the wall. Not only a slang word, mewing is a move. According to the American Association of Orthodontists (AAO), mewing claims to be a "do-it ...
Language change happens at all levels from the phonological level to the levels of vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and discourse. Even though language change is often initially evaluated negatively by speakers of the language who often consider changes to be "decay" or a sign of slipping norms of language usage, it is natural and inevitable. [119]