The Old English verb steorfan ("to die, from any cause") is the source of the Modern English verb starve ("to die from lack of food"). What is the technical term used to describe this type of meaning change?

Question

Social Studies

Reginald Potter

23 October, 08:02

The Old English verb steorfan ("to die, from any cause") is the source of the Modern English verb starve ("to die from lack of food"). What is the technical term used to describe this type of meaning change?

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Zayne Charles · Answer 1

Semantic narrowing

Explanation:

In linguistics, the term semantic narrowing refers to the shift in which words refer to a more specific class of items or objects.

Semantic narrowing also refers to the process by which a word's meaning becomes less general than its earlier meaning so, with time, the meaning of said word becomes more specific.

In this example, the word 'steorfan' which means 'to die of any use' is the source of the verb 'starve' which means 'to die from lack of food'. We can observe that the original meaning is broader than the current meaning of the word, which is more specific now. Thus the meaning of the word got narrowed and we can say that the technical term that would describe this would be the term 'semantic narrowing'