Words don’t like to sit still. Over time, their meanings transform, expand, and even completely metamorphose. Typically, these changes happen gradually over time, but it’s fascinating to see just how differently you might read the same sentence today as our ancestors would have decades ago.
One particularly interesting subset of words are those that once upon a time had very big, generic definitions but have since narrowed in meaning over time. The process is called semantic narrowing, and it has affected some well-known words in pretty surprising ways.
What one word meant yesterday may mean something completely different today. Click through to take a look at some words whose meanings have narrowed over time.