[Multilingual Monday] Semantic Shifts

[aadroma]

It's somewhat well-known that the English word awful had a far different meaning about 300 years ago or so. At that point in time, it meant "majestic" -- being full of awe (awe having gone from "something that provides terror" and gradually shifted due to interpratations of the wonders of God, the original source of "fear" from the original

Comments

[muckefuck]

Many Chinese characters have had some shift in meaning -- 能 was at one point "bear" until it started to be used to mean "capable", and then a fire radical was shoved underneath and suddenly you have a new "bear", 熊.

Roll your eyes at my pedantry, go ahead, but this is somewhat different phenomenon. In this case, there wasn't one word that changed its meaning (as in the case of awful) but rather two words that happened to share a written form until one was given a unique character

[aadroma]

No, you're certainly right, it is a somewhat different phenomenon, but it's still a chang in written meaning -- at some point in time, character for X stopped meaning X, though it was an admittedly poor example. If you have another that better fits the phenomenon we're discussing -- go for it. However, in my experience, the "borrowed character meaning causes the creation of a new character" phenomenon is far more common.

So I'll ask you: do you have an example in modern Chinese where 亂 still retains meaning of "control"?

[muckefuck]

Wow, I didn't even realise that was the ancient meaning! I can't think of a single example--that's a real doozy of a change!

[aadroma]

I have several references for this too that state the character's original meaning, and one has stated (without example, of course) that it is still a minor meaning in modern Chinese. If it is, I certainly haven't seen it either, but if I do, I'll certainly post it!

[muckefuck]

"Nice" is a pretty classic English example, making the shift from "foolish, ignorant" (Latin nescius, literally "not knowing") to "agreeable, attractive".

Another word meaning "foolish" with an interesting development is "dizzy". In Middle English, it shifted to mean "giddy, having a sense of vertigo". Now it has come full circle, being used colloquially to mean "foolish" once more.