Directions

As with processes, the directions of etymological change will be classified in different ways by different people; we will use this scheme (the classifications here are not mutually exclusive):

1. deterioration;

2. elevation;

3. specialization;

4. concretization;

5. extension;

6. metaphorization;

7. radiation.

We can divide these seven into three groups according to the direction of change each manifests. Deterioration and elevation are opposites of each other; specialization and concretization develop in similar ways, the approximate opposite of those followed by extension and metaphorization; and radiation’s directions include nearly all of those followed by the others. We might suggest their relationship by diagrams like those in figure 5.2.

Deterioration and elevation. When a word deteriorates (in etymology, the term has no bad connotations, such as of decay), it changes from a relatively exalted or at least neutral significance in its first recorded usage to a relatively condemnatory or trivial meaning. “Silly”, for instance, originally meant blessed, not its current foolish; “knave” referred to a youth or boy, not to a rascal. The opposite happens when a word’s semantic meaning is elevated from something neutral or deprecatory to something more suggestive of approval. “Knight” originally referred to any young man and carried none of its present associations with romantic gallantry and glory. “Fond” first meant foolish, daft, or crazy, not affectionate (although it is easy enough to see how the meaning changed as it did). A “surgeon” began as a barber who also drew blood, applied leeches, and pulled teeth; his sign, incidentally, was a bloody rag, which survives in the red-and-white barber’s pole.

Specialization and concretization. In specialization and its analog, concretization, the motion of change is from the general or metaphoric to the specific or concrete. The opposite path is followed by extension and metaphorization, which change from the specific or concrete to the general or metaphoric. A word is said to have become specialized if its application has become narrower over time. “Meat” has come to refer particularly to animal flesh rather than to food generally, and “starve” now means death through failure to ingest food instead of death by any means. But a concretized word has moved from an abstract reference to a moreconcrete one. “Multitude” now means a crowd, a collection of tangible, individual, countable bodies. It has the feature [+count] now. Originally, however, it was a mass [–count] noun meaning “many-ness”. Similarly, the word “youth”, which originally referred only to the abstract, [–count] concept “youngness”, now also has acquired a [+count] reference to young people, as in “the youth of this nation are its best chance for the future”.

Extension and metaphorization. Extension reverses specialization: an extended word now has a wider application than it did at first. For example, “bird” currently is a generic reference to any member of the class Aves, rather than its original, specific reference to a young, nesting bird. Similarly, metaphorization reverses concretization: what once had only a specific, concrete reference can now be applied in a metaphoric, nonliteral fashion. “Bright” no longer applies only to a quality of light; we can intelligibly speak of a bright boy. “Sharp” can be applied to tongues or winds, not just to blades; a smile is “cold”, not only the temperature. Many words that technically are the products of metaphorization have been in use so long that they have lost their flash of metaphor: “ blanket of snow”, “to labor under an illusion”, “ casting aspersions”, “the grasp of a subject”. These are known as dead metaphors.

Radiation. Finally, although radiation is probably most closely related to extension, it actually combines the directions of the last four types. When a word’s meanings undergo radiation, they spread or branch out into near-metaphor, in the sense that the meanings are applied in unusual contexts. But unlike extension and metaphorization, the meanings are not derived chronologically from one another, in a sequential alteration of meaning. Rather, the present meanings of a radiated word coexist with the original ones and all meanings past and present, still refer to essentially the same idea. For instance, all the current applications of the word “paper” — from those referring to an essay or journal to the references to a governmental policy statement — still carry some sense of the original, literal reference to a papyruslike material on which to write. Similarly, “head” still conveys the notion of that part of the body containing the brain, even in such diverse uses as “head of state”, “head of the bed”, or, in the slang of some drug users “head” meaning one who uses drugs extensively, as in “He’s a real dope head”.

Figure 5.2. Relationships among the Etymological Directions

Folk etymology. One further pattern in diachronic morphology we have not yet discussed is folk etymology. This is a change in the form of a word orphrase, resulting either from an incorrect popular notion of the term’s original meaning or from the influence of more familiar terms mistakenly taken to be analogous. “Sparrow-grass”, or “sparrygrass”, a regional-dialectic word derived by folk etymology from “asparagus”, and “cold slaw”, from “coleslaw”, reflect mistaken analogies. The Middle Ages were particularly fond of the first type of etymologizing, as can be seen in the common medieval spelling of “abomination” as “abhomination”, with an < h> in its middle. The word actually comes from the Latin ab, away from, and omen, evil sign or portent, and thus means an ill omen to be shunned. But throughout the sixteenth century, the assumption was that it had come from ab homine away from man, that is, something inhuman.

All of these directions and processes of morphological change depend to some degree upon phonological shifts as well. All the changes stem from one of any language’s, and therefore one of the English language’s, more important traits: its open-ended acceptance of change, particularly lexical change. Bear in mind that the open-endedness in turn depends upon majority rule, or conventionality, which itself is an aspect of language’s systematic and sociocultural functions. Languages change because speakers participate in and accept the changes. Those lexical and structural shifts may reflect alterations in the speakers’ perceptions of the varying realities around them: social, political, economic, psychological, and so on. Alterations in a language over time probably reflect the alterations in the society of which that language is a part.