Meat, say, was first used to refer to all food (hence candy being called sweetmeat) but narrowed to refer to flesh. Alone, they imply that words’ meanings change in a clear direction, which feels intuitive, only minorly transformative. However, broadening and narrowing alone do not convey the essence of the matter. Hence questions such as “What is texting doing to language?” despite that it would be impossible to speak with capital letters or to utter a sequence of emoticons. In this vein, “language” in the conception of most people brings the printed word to mind first, with speech considered an afterthought. That assumption that “music” refers to classical is now antique, but lives on in how readily a textbook, or even trade book, on classical music can be titled as about “music” as if Brahms and Schoenberg are somehow the default conception of music, with rock, jazz, hiphop, Peruvian huayno music, and Indian ragas somehow not “music music.” More subtly, today’s discussions about the value of “reading” presuppose that the topic is fiction: “reading” is not assumed to include books about the Thirty Years’ War, the cosmos, or cod. In the old days - roughly the first half of the twentieth century - the question “Do you like music?” referred to classical music no one questioned whether a person enjoyed a pop tune, a jig or a lullaby. “Does he drink?” is a question about alcohol, not whether the person imbibes liquids in general. Many words have narrowed under the radar, in certain usages. That was a classic case of semantic broadening, paralleled by the narrowing of the scope of hound, which now refers only to a dog used for hunting (Chihuahuas aren’t hounds). Over time, it came to be used as the all-purpose word for dog. When hound was the normal word for a canine, dog was a word for a big, fierce sort of dog. It is traditionally covered that meanings have either broadened or narrowed over time. Those fond of books on language may be familiar with one facet of the inherent changeability of words’ meanings. He traces the evolution of five words that have spent millennia drifting from one meaning into another. Ellen Porteus “Words over time have a way of just oozing around,” says linguist John McWhorter.
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