by Dr. Karen Wieland and James Currie So far we have taken brief looks at a related pair of word-meaning shifts: from an earlier narrow meaning to a broader, more general meaning (generalization) and its semantic opposite, as it were, from a broader, general meaning to a narrow, specific meaning (specialization). With this […]
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Word Meaning Changes over Time: Part Two – Specialization
by Dr. Karen Wieland and James Currie In this post, we would like to pick up where we left off talking about word-meaning changes. In a previous post, we began this series explaining Generalization, where the meaning of a word changes from a historically narrower meaning to a broader meaning: think “Kleenex” – […]
Advice to Authors (Off the Top of My Head)
I teach a series of multi-week courses on Outschool called Vocabulary Building with Latin and Greek Roots and Affixes. This winter, the students and I have been having fun creating poems featuring English words derived from specific Greek and Latin roots. In this piece involving words derived from caput, capitis (Latin = ‘head’), I once again […]
‘Patriot’ Politics at the Pub
I’ve been doing something creative with students in my Vocabulary Building with Latin and Greek Roots and Affixes courses on Outschool. We’ve been writing poetry using lists of words that share the same Latin or Greek root-word origin. I crafted this poem using words derived from the Latin verb iacere “to throw.” This piece is […]
Twist
I’ve been doing something creative with students in my Vocabulary Building with Latin and Greek Roots and Affixes courses on Outschool. We’ve been writing poetry using lists of words we have curated that share the same Latin or Greek root-word origin. I crafted this poem using words derived from the Latin verb torquere “to […]
Tense Letter to the Landlord
I’ve been doing something creative with students in my Vocabulary Building with Latin and Greek Roots and Affixes courses on Outschool. We’ve been writing poetry using lists of words we have curated that share the same Latin or Greek root-word origin. I crafted this poem using words derived from the Latin verbs tenere “to hold,” […]