A number of classification schemes have been suggested for semantic change. The most widely accepted scheme in the English-speaking academic world is from Bloomfield (1933):
- Narrowing: Change from superordinate level to subordinate level. For example, skyline used to refer to any horizon, but now it has narrowed to a horizon decorated by skyscrapers.
- Widening: Change from subordinate level to superordinate level. There are many examples of specific brand names being used for the general product, such as with Kleenex.
- Metaphor: Change based on similarity of thing. For example, broadcast originally meant “to cast seeds out”; with the advent of radio and television, the word was extended to indicate the transmission of audio and video signals. Outside of agricultural circles, very few people use broadcast in the earlier sense.
- Metonymy: Change based on nearness in space or time, e.g., jaw “cheek” → “jaw”.
- Synecdoche: Change based on whole-part relation. The convention of using capital cities to represent countries or their governments is an example of this.
- Litotes: Change from stronger to weaker meaning, e.g., astound “strike with thunder” → “surprise strongly”.
- Hyperbole: Change from weaker to stronger meaning, e.g., kill “torment” → “kill”.
- Degeneration: e.g., knave “boy” → “servant”.
- Elevation: e.g., knight “boy” → “knight”.
However, the categorization of Blank (1998) has gained increasing acceptance:
- Metaphor: Change based on similarity between concepts, e.g., mouse “rodent” → “computer device”.
- Metonymy: Change based on contiguity between concepts, e.g., horn “animal horn” → “musical instrument”.
- Synecdoche: Same as above.
- Specialization of meaning: Downward shift in a taxonomy, e.g., corn “corn” → “wheat” (UK).
- Generalization of meaning: Upward shift in a taxonomy, e.g., hoover “Hoover vacuum cleaner” → “any type of vacuum cleaner”.
- Cohyponymic transfer: Horizontal shift in a taxonomy, e.g., the confusion of mouse and rat in some dialects.
- Antiphrasis: Change based on a contrastive aspect of the concepts, e.g., perfect lady in the sense of “prostitute”.
- Auto-antonymy: Change of a word’s sense and concept to the complementary opposite, e.g., bad in the slang sense of “good”.
- Auto-converse: Lexical expression of a relationship by the two extremes of the respective relationship, e.g., take in the dialectal use as “give”.
- Ellipsis: Semantic change based on the contiguity of names, e.g., car “cart” → “automobile”, due the to invention of the (motor) car.
- Folk-etymology: Semantic change based on the similarity of names, e.g., French contredanse, orig. English country dance).
