What Is Semantic Shift?
If scientists get busy developing time travel, we’re going to have some very confusing conversations between people from different eras. Slang is constantly updating and developing with new generations, and even existing words change meaning over time. A conversation can get derailed by a single word when the participants don’t
agree on its meaning. For example, describing a sunset as “awful” could have two distinct meanings. In its original usage, the meaning was “inspiring reverential wonder or fear,” describing anything that inspired the feeling of awe in a person. But these days, “awful” has shifted to mean “very bad or...
