What is the term for words that have changed meaning over time?


What is the term for words that have changed meaning over time? For example, in relation to this question on Workplace Stack Exchange the term snafu was of military origin and was used to define a person, team, organisation, etc that continually makes mistakes. The first time I saw the term was in relation to a data protection leak and this now seems a pretty common usage e.g this article amongst the tech community.


Is there a term to describe words that have changed meaning over time, or words that have been adopted by a particular community and had their meaning altered?



Answer



There isn't a word for those words, but the evolution of meaning is called semantic change.


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