English Words

9.5.2
Semantic narrowing
The converse of widening is narrowing. The range of meanings associated with word-forms may become
more restricted. This is called SEMANTIC NARROWING. The discussion and exemplification of
narrowing draws on the OED and Room (1986).
[9.8]
Accident
means an unintended injurious or disastrous event. Its original meaning was just any event, especially one
that was unforeseen. Thus, in the final act of The Tempest Prospero speaks of what has happened to him since his arrival
on the island as: 
…the particular accidents gone by Since I came to this isle.
Adder
in Old English meant any serpent. Later the meaning of this word was restricted to vipers.
Deer
originally referred to any four-legged beast. Later the meaning of deer was narrowed to a family of ruminant
mammals with deciduous antlers that includes the reindeer, red deer etc. The imported French word animal,
meaning beast, supplanted deer around the middle of the sixteenth century.
Fowl
in Old English referred to any bird. Subsequently, the meaning of this word was narrowed to a bird raised
for food, or a wild bird hunted for ‘sport’.
Ledger
was originally a word that referred to any book, e.g. a register, or large bible that lay permanently in the
same place, but by the seventeenth century its meaning had narrowed to an accounts book.
ENGLISH WORDS 121

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9.5.3
Going up and down in the world
The associations and connotations of a word may change. If a word acquires a more positive meaning, we
speak of AMELIORATION; if it acquires a more negative meaning we speak of PEJORATION.
Take the meaning of the word villain (originally spelt villein). It has gone downhill. In the age of
fuedalism a villein was just a type of humble serf who cultivated the lord’s land. (The feudal vil was a farm).
Today a villain is not a peasant, but a person of doubtful virtue, a scoundrel. Note also how peasant has
acquired negative connotations. I think you would be insulted if someone called you a peasant. When it was
first adopted from French, this word simply meant a country person who worked the land. Current French
paysan
comes from Old French païsant. Old French païs became Modern French pays ‘country’. The -ant
suffix indicated origin in Old French. So, a peasant was someone from a country district. That meaning is
not lost in modern English peasant. But the word has acquired the additional negative connotations of
‘boorish, very low-status person’.
While the words villain and peasant have gone down the scale, the opposite has happened to knight.
Originally it meant ‘servant’. (In modern German the related word Knecht still means ‘servant’.) But in the
age of chivalry the knight went up in public esteem. Being knighted is still considered a great honour.
Amelioration and pejoration of meaning have a lot to do with social values. Nowhere is this clearer than
in the attitude to different occupations. For instance, at one time the surgeon enjoyed no more prestige than
the butcher. Both were seen as tradesmen very skilled in cutting and chopping flesh and bones with sharp
knives. However, with the professionalisation of surgery and the establishment of the Royal College of
Surgeons, practitioners of surgery enjoyed ever increasing public esteem. Today nobody would contemplate
lumping them with butchers. (Would butchers too have enjoyed improved status had they established a
Royal College of Butchers?)