riginally referred to «any type of stringed instrument »but came to be used to refer only a specific instrument with 13 strings, which was played horizontally and was popular in the Edo Period.examples of specialization, from the development of English, include: Old Meaning« emotion »« animal »« countryside »« a young person » « to die »taxonomy of semantic changeother semantic change can be discussed in either terms of generalization or specialization. The following diagram shows different subtypes of meaning change., Or extensionextensionor narrowingspecializationreversalshift in meaning results from the subsequent action of generalization and specialization over time: a word that has extended into a new area then undergoes narrowing to exclude its original meaning. In the unlikely event that all the senses of place except for «a business office» faded away, then place would be said to have undergone a shift.is a figure of speech where one word is substituted for a related word; the relationship might be that of cause and effect, container and contained, part and whole. For instance, Shakespeare's comment «Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?» (From Much Ado About Nothing) uses «sheep's guts» to refer to the music produced by harpstrings. Had guts come to mean «music», then the meaning would have shifted due to metonymy.
The Greek word dГіma originally meant В«roofВ». In the same way English speakers will metonymically use roof to mean В«houseВ» (as in В«Now we have a roof over our headsВ») , the Greeks frequently used dГіma to refer to В«houseВ», so that that is now the standard meaning of the word. A Russian word will provide a similar example: vinograd, В«vineyardВ», was so frequently used to refer to В«grapesВ», as in В«Let's have a taste of the vineyardВ» that it has come to mean В«grapesВ». ExtensionMurray Hopper, the late Admiral and computer pioneer, told a story of an early computer that kept calculating incorrectly. When technicians opened up its case to examine the wiring, which physically represented the machine's logic, a huge dead moth was found, shorting out one of the circuits and causing the faulty logic. That moth was the first of its kind to achieve immortality. Because of it, software is now frequently plagued with В«bugsВ». Use of bug to refer to an error in computer logic was a metaphorical extension that became so popular that it is now part of the regular meaning of bug. The computer industry has a host of words whose meaning has been extended through such metaphors, including mouse for that now ubiquitous computer input device (so named because the cord connecting it to the computer made it resemble that cutest of rodents). Extension is the extension of meaning in a new direction ...
