at»: «undershirt» 's poem gave many good examples of amelioration, including priest from «old man». A complementary term, pastor, likewise underwent amelioration, originally meaning «shepherd» (a sense surviving in the word pastoral), but coming to mean its current sense of «minister» by the extensive Christian references to «the Lord is my shepherd» as a call to ministry.following table shows other examples, including pluck in the sense of He has a lot of pluck.Old Meaning «abuse» («courage») «entrails» « shepherd »(« spirit »)« act of tugging » « woman »James II called the just completed St. Paul's Cathedral amusing, awful and artificial. Call the just completed rock and roll museum in Cleveland amusing, awful and artificial, and you may be accurate but you will mean something quite different from King James. When he lived, those words meant that the cathedral was «pleasing, awe-inspiring and artful» respectively. The meaning of each word has grown more negative with time. People seem much more likely to drag words down than to lift them up, to build museums instead of cathedrals, as the following examples may demonstrate.Old Meaning «strong» «knowing» « distinguished, standing out from the herd » « a boy »« famous »« flexible »« popular »reversala word will shift so far from its original meaning that its meaning will nearly reverse. Fascinatingly enough, the word manufacture originally meant «to make by hand». Old Meaning «an original» «to sort out» «to make by hand» contronym is like a word that has undergone semantic reversal, only the tension has not eased: the word still preserves its original meaning, along with a contradictory - if not exactly counterposed - meaning.Meanings «happening every other month», «happening twice monthly» «happening every other week», «happening twice weekly» < span align = "justify"> «to overwhelm with force, especially rape» *, «to overwhelm with emotion, enrapture» «authoritative measure of approval» *, «coercive measure of disapproval of nation against nation» Brit. «To put on the table for discussion», Amer. «To set aside a motion rather than discuss it», biannual means only «twice each year», with no recorded sense of «every other year» in Webster's II New Riverside University Dictionary.word cleave (meaning «to split or separate» or «to adhere or cling») is actually two different words, both from the Old English (cle-ofan and cleofian respectively) but by changes in pronunciation, these words have evolved the same current form.nadir of semantics is meaninglessness. The final semantic change. The death of meaning. The defeat of sigor.word sigor is Old English for «victory». It is now meaningless to almost all English speakers, except for those familiar with Old English or w...
