Grimmer Girl here, I'm Mignon Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language.

Writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today I have a segment about semantic bleaching with words like literally and awesome, and

a segment about using video games to learn a new language.

Today we're going to talk about a totally awesome topic, semantic bleaching.

This has nothing to do with words in our language turning white.

Instead it has to do with how the meaning of words can fade over time, just like a colorful

shirt fades after it's been washed too many times.

We've talked many times on the podcast about how our language is constantly evolving.

New words appear, think of Uber, Adulting, Turned, or Bay.

Others drop out of favor like Foxy or Groovy.

Others fall completely out of use.

When it's the last time you heard someone talk about a bodkin or a camel leopard, for example.

By the way, a bodkin is what we used to call a knife, and a camel leopard was a giraffe.

Some of these changes can seem a bit random, and others fall into patterns.

For example, sometimes the literal sense of a word develops a figurative use.

The verb to milk originally meant to draw milk from a cow or other animal.

Over time the meaning extended, and now you can milk someone for anything valuable, usually

through trickery or extortion.

To escalate once meant simply to travel up an escalator.

Now it refers to an increase in intensity or scope.

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