Lexical and semantic change

Common collocation

A group of words that are commonly written or spoken together. For example, 'Once upon a time'.

Perjoration

The semantic meaning of the word becomes more negative.

Amelioration

The semantic meaning of the word becomes more positive.

Narrowing

The semantic meaning of the word loses some of its meaning/s.

Broadening

The semantic meaning of the word takes on more meanings.

Clipping

When a part of a word is shortened to produce a new word with the same meaning. For example, 'advertisement' becomes 'ad', 'examination' becomes 'exam'. These are examples of back clipping.

Blending

When two parts of a word are written or spoken together to form a new word. For example, glamping is an informal word/term but was formed through blending the words 'glam' and 'camping' together.

Compounding

When two words are placed together to create a new word or add to the semantic meaning. It is often marked by a hyphen. For example, 'country-house'.

Borrowing

Words borrowed or loaned from another language. For example, 'dekko' is borrowed from Hindi meaning 'look'.

Field specific lexis

Words that are associated with each other in the same piece of text but are also related to a specific topic. Often involves jargon. For example, 'computer', 'mouse', 'file', document'.

Lexical field / semantic field

Words that are associated with each other in the same piece of text. For example, 'fairytale', 'princess', 'prince'.

Antonym

Words that are typically opposite (antonyms) are semantically changing to mean the opposite of their definition. For example, 'wicked' used to mean bad but it now means good (it has a similar effect to the word 'awesome').