EXTENSION OF MEANING(METAPHORICAL EXTENSION)

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 INTRODUCTION

A word is generally accepted as the way of expressing the

notions in human thoughts. During the history of
linguistics numerous investigations have been conducted
related to the word in general, the meaning of word, the
interdependence between word and its meaning, the
motivation of word formation and also terms of semantic
changes in different languages.

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 INTRODUCTION

Meaning of extension:
• The act of extending or the condition of being extended:
the extension of the subway into the suburbs.
• The amount, degree, or range to which something extends
or can extend: the wire has an extension of 50 feet
By definition:
• A part that is added to something to enlarge or prolong it.
• A length of electric cable which permits the use of
appliances at some distance from a fixed socket.

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 INTRODUCTION
Extension of meaning
The meaning of a word can change so that it now refers
to a wider category of items than it previously referred
to. Extension of meaning may be illustrated by the word
target which originally meant ‘a small round shield’ but
now it means ‘anything that is fired at’. If the word with
extended meaning passed from the specialized
vocabulary into common use, the result of the semantic
change is described as generalization of meaning.
For example: ‘holiday’ (earlier it was only used as related
to religious days but now its any day that is off)
Another example : Latin word ‘passer’ means ‘sparrow’
(now extended) in Spanish called ‘pajaro’ means ‘all
kinds of bird’
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 EXTENSION OF MEANING

Extension of meaning has three subtypes :

• Metaphoric extension
• Metonymy
• Synecdoche

From the above three extension of meaning, here we

would basically discuss about the first subtype i.e.
Metaphorical extension, which is broadly discussed below:

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 METAPHORICAL EXTENSION

A metaphorical extension is the extension of meaning in

the new direction through popular adoption of original
metaphorical comparison. Metaphorical extension is
almost is universal and natural process in any language
undergone by every word. In general its not even
perceived in every day usage as meaning change. One at
least obvious users don’t say as extending a meaning of
a word. Consider the example of illuminate it originally
meant to light up, something more than dark. But it is
evolved meaning to clarify. After a while these new
meanings seems so natural to be an integral parts of the
word.

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 METAPHORICAL EXTENTION

According to linguists Jeffery Henning, radiation is

metaphorical extension on a ground of scale with new
meanings radiating from central semantic core to embrace
many related ideas. The word ‘head’ is originally referred to
that part of the human body above the rest. Since the top of a
nail pin or screw is likely human head the top of the slimmest
line, the senses become included in the meaning of head. The
meaning of the word the ‘head’ is radiated out to include the
head of a coin, picturing the human head, the head in the list,
the top item in the list., the head of a family and others.

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 METAPHORICAL EXTENSION

Definitions of metaphor vary and are often vague. That is , it is

often difficult to determine whether a given instance fits a
definition or not. Metaphor includes understanding one kind
of a thing in terms of another kind of a thing thought
somehow to be similar in some way i.e. A like B. Metaphor in
semantics change involves extension in the meaning of a word
that suggest a semantic similarity or connections between the
new sense and the original one.
In semantic change metaphor is considered to be the major
factor. It has likened to analogy where one thing is
conceptualized in terms of another, with a leap across
semantic domains.

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 METAPHORICAL EXTENTION

An example of a much repeated is, English bead, now meaning

‘ small piece of material pierced for threading on a line, which
comes from Middle English Bede prayer, ‘prayer bead’, which
in old English was Beode gebed‘prayer’ (compare the German
equivalent Gebet prayer’)
The semantic shift from ‘prayer to bead’ came about through
the metaphoric extensions from the ‘prayer’ which kept track
of by the rosary bead, to the rosary bead itself and then
eventually to any bead, even including ‘beads’ of water.

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 METAPHORIC EXTENSION

Frequently, mentioned examples of metaphoric extensions

involve expressions for ‘to kill’: dispose of, do someone in,
liquidate, terminate, take care of, eliminate and others. In
slang, there are may metaphoric changes for ‘drunk’ based
on forms whose original meaning is associated with being
damaged in some way: blasted, blitzed, bombed,
hammered, obliterated, ripped, shredded , smashed,
tattered, wasted and many more. Another area of
metaphor for ‘drunk’ involves being saturated with liquid,
pissed, sauced, sloshed, soaked.

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 METAPHORICAL EXTENSION

Some other examples that are mostly used in computer

technology are: the computer hardware faults and
software errors are now routinely referred to as “bugs” and
getting the flaws out of a product is known as ‘debugging’
the system.

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 METAPHORICAL EXTENSION

The use of bug to refer to a computer error in logic was

metaphorical extension that has become so popular that it is
now part of the regular meaning of ‘bug’. The computer
industry has a host of words whose meaning has been
extended through such metaphors, including ‘mouse’ for
processing a ‘tail’ similar to said rodent now used widely for
these computers input devices, even though the more modern
wireless ones have lost the metaphorical tail entirely.

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 METAPHORICAL EXTENSION

Examples of metaphorical extension in other languages:

• French feuille ‘leaf, sheet of paper’ < ‘leaf (of plant)’; Spanish
hoja ‘leaf, sheet of paper’ < ‘leaf’ (both from Latin folia ‘leaves,
plural of folium ‘leaf’).
• French entendre ‘to hear’ comes by metaphor from original ‘to
understand’(compare the Spanish cognate entender ‘to
understand)
• Spanish sierra ‘saw’ was applied by metaphor to ‘mountain
range’; now there is sierra ‘saw’ and sierra ‘mountain range’.
• Spanish pierna ‘leg’ < Latin perna ‘ham.

SOURCE: Campbell, lyle. Historical Linguistics-An introduction (third

edition).
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 METAPHORICAL EXTENSION

•French fermer ‘to close’ originally meant ‘to fix, make firm
or fast’. Spanish firmar ‘to sign (with one’s signature)’ has
the same source.
•Latin capta¯re ‘to catch, to try to seize, to trap’ became in
French chasser‘to hunt, to chase, to drive away, to cause a
hurried departure’ (the source from which English chase is
borrowed, which means both to go after, and try to catch,
drive ( away)’)

SOURCE: Campbell, lyle. Historical linguistucs-An

introduction (third edition)

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 METAPHORICAL EXTENSION

The Latin ancestor of our word precocious meant ‘ripening

early’ and was applied to fruit; now this term metaphorically is
applied to children who develop earlier than most. Our verb
govern derives from a Latin verb that meant only ‘steer’ or
‘pilot’ (a boat); the metaphor here is obvious.
Almost any sort of resemblance, real or imagined, may cause a
word to be pressed into service as a metaphor. The word hot
can be applied to a currently fashionable or successful
performer, to stolen money or goods, to an intense shade of
red or pink, to a bad –tempered argument or discussion, to a
sexually inviting woman to spicy food, to a hard-hit ball, to
recent and dramatic news, to an exciting style of jazz; in each
case, you can probably see the resemblance to heat that
makes the metaphor possible.
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 CONCLUSION

One of the commonest of all types of semantic change is

metaphor: applying a word to something it does not literally
denote in order to draw attention to a resemblance.
Metaphor is so frequent that it might reasonably be taken as
the paradigm type of semantic change.

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 REFERENCE

Campbell, lyle. Historical linguistics –An introduction (third

edition). Edinburgh university press, 2013 . Print.

Millar.Robert McColl. Trask’s Historical Linguistics-third

edition. New York : Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2015 .
Print.

Hock, Hans Henrich, Joseph, Brian D. Language History,

Language Change, Language relationship- An introduction to
historical comparative Linguistics (Second-revised edition).
Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009. Print.

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