Meaning change King James II about

Meaning change

King James II, about the newly completed St. Paul’s cathedral: • “amusing” • “awful” • “artificial”

pompous The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain. -Thomas Paine, American Crisis II, 1777

scan

scan • Latin ‘climb’ (root of ascend) • scan a verse (scansion) • read carefully • search quickly • put a document through a scanner

spam 1937 1942 1959 1991 1993 Spam, Hormel trademark spam, ‘canned meat’ spammy, spam-filled, mediocre’ spam. V ‘crash a program by using a flood of input data’ spam. N, V ‘undesired Internet content’; send massive number of Internet messages’

harlot OF: ‘lad, young fellow, rascal’ ME (1340): ‘fellow who does something to get a laugh’ He … was a gentil harlot and a kynde. A bettre felawe sholde men noght fynde. (Chaucer, 1386) ME (1483): ‘female juggler, dancing-girl, actress’ 16 th century: ‘unchaste woman; prostitute’

parlor • 12 th century: part of a monastery used for conversation (Fr. parler) • 18 th century: sitting room How is parlor used today?

divan • • • Persian 'brochure' collection of poems register military pay book account book room where an acct book was kept acct office or customs house court, council of state (borrowed into English) hall (Eng, 1597) chief piece of furniture in a hall

e - leg - ant ‘out’ ‘select’ ‘-ing’ literally, ‘reflecting choice’ In pre-classical Latin, elegant had the connotation ‘fussy, picky. ’

Outcomes of semantic change: widening narrowing melioration pejoration

Widening barn ‘ storehouse for barley’ = OE bere 'barley' + aern 'house'

adore ad-ore = ‘pray to’ > ‘really like’ Note: The OED gives the original English meaning as ‘pray to. ’ It traces adore to the Latin word for ‘worship. ’ This Latin meaning in turn developed from the root or ‘speak’ -- the same root as in the word oral.

Narrowing • corn = grain (still in Brit English) • deer = animal (cognate: Gm tier) Shakespeare, King Lear: “Mice, rats, and such small deare”

Melioration • praise 'appraise, put a value on‘ • nice = Lat nescius 'ignorant' -> simple -> particular (nice distinction) -> pleasant • earl 'man' -> man of war' -> nobleman

Pejoration • lewd 'lay, as opposed to clerical' -> ignorant -> obscene, vulgar • censure 'opinion' • criticism 'discrimination' • silly 'timely' -> happy, blessed -> innocent, simple -> ridiculously simple • pompous ‘important’ -> self-important

What type of change? cunning "knowing" egregious "distinguished” guts “entrails“ notorious "famous" obsequious "flexible" queen "woman" vulgar "popular" Scripture Bible

Two fundamental types of meaning change: metaphor metonym

Metaphor • foot ( of mountain, tree) • understand • grasp

Explain these metaphors • organic (as in organic food) • organize • consideration

• organic = derived from living matter • organize = make a body, i. e. an instrument of organs • consideration = take the stars into account

Why is metaphor so common?

Mixed metaphors … advanced climate research … is fragmented among an alphabet soup of agencies, strained by inadequate computing power and starved for the basic measurements of real-world conditions … --NYT, 11 June 2001

Mixed metaphors The FAA is far from out of the woods, and the flip side of its shiny Krugerrand of reassurance is a dull and gritty kopeck of uncertainty and unanswered questions. Time. com, Time Digital, 1999

$435, 000, 3 br Perfection personified posted: April 7, 2008 http: //richmond. backpage. com/Homes. For. Sale/_435_000_3 br_perfectio n_personified_at_stonehouse/classifieds/View. Ad? oid=880364

Etymology of metaphor meta‘across’ ‘beyond’ phor ‘bear’ ‘carry’ (Thus, the word metaphor itself is a metaphor. )

Another type of metaphor: synesthesia • clear (sight -> sound) • loud (sound -> sight)

Metonymy • I like reading Joyce. • Ms. Grundy frowns on blue jeans. • pigskin • Get your butt over here.

Metonymy or metaphor? • • • foot of a tree foot = 12 inches hand = measure of horse size give someone a hand = ‘help’ neck = narrow margin for winning neck of a violin

Exercise On the board, write a word that is closely associated with computer technology

Semantic reversal • manufacture “to make by hand” • garble “to remove the refuse (garble) from”

Contronyms • bimonthly • ‘happening every other month’; ‘happening twice monthly’ • biweekly • ‘happening every other week’; ‘happening twice weekly’ • table • Brit. : ‘to bring forward or submit for discussion or consideration’; U. S. : ‘to lay on the table as a way of postponing indefinitely; to shelve’ • sanction • ‘authoritative measure of approval, ’ ‘coercive measure of disapproval of nation against nation’

store

store 12. A place where merchandise is kept for sale. Chiefly N. Amer. and elsewhere outside the U. K. In early use, a shop on a large scale, and dealing in a great variety of articles). Now, equivalent to the British use of SHOP n. 2 The use of the word in this sense has not become common in the U. K. except in … chain store, department store, store detective …, in which it still refers to a large shop.

a the

Assignment for next week Keep a log of word uses that catch your interest, esp. uses that don’t match what you would normally do yourself. The instances can come from reading, speech, dreams, whatever. If possible, email the log to me by noon on Monday the 12, and I’ll circulate them to the class in the evening for discussion and analysis by the group.

Sample log 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. “perceived sleights” NYT 5/1/08 (corrected on the Web) sleight = ‘crafty maneuver’; slight = ‘humiliating discourtesy’ reticent = ‘reluctant’ (“I’m reticent to say, ” spoken by a linguist) bisyllabic for disyllabic (same linguist) addle brained “didn’t affect my decision-making process” (CBS radio interview in Indiana): i. e. “didn’t affect my decision”!

Clichés called my bluff caught my eye crossed my mind disappeared into thin air grab the bull by the horns feel it in my bones slipped my mind turn over a new leaf piece of cake burning with desire heavy heart raining cats and dogs behind closed doors can't put my finger on it on solid ground on the edge of my seat on the other hand out of the blue the big picture the living daylights a bitter pill a new lease on life the ball is in your court the light at the end of the tunnel tough act to follow makes my skin crawl that rings a bell

from Wood Odors By Walt Whitman Wandering the negligent paths -the soothing silence, The stillness and the veiled The myriad living columns of the temple The holy Sabbath morning Incense and songs of birds in deep recesses But most the delicate smells fitting the soul The sky aloft, seen through the tree-tops All the young growth & green maturity of May White laurel-blossoms within reach wood-pinks below-overhead stately tuliptrees with yellow cup-shaped flowers.

Matronalia Roman festival honoring Juno, the goddess of childbirth. On this day Roman husbands traditionally gave presents to their wives.

Mothering Sunday … Mothering Sunday, when all the ‘servant-lads’ and ‘servant wenches’ are, in some parts of the country, set at liberty for a day, to go and see their mothers. --W. HOWITT Rural Life Eng. 1838

Mother’s Day in the U. S. 1870: Julia Ward Howe (author of Battle Hymn of the Republic) proclaims a day in protest of the death of sons in the Civil War 1914: Mother’s Day becomes an official U. S. holiday.