Semantic change can make a word wider in meaning, narrower in meaning, more positive, or more negative. Which option is NOT listed as a possible outcome?

• A. Narrower
• B. Broader
• C. More Positive
• D. More Neutral

Answer: (D)

Semantic change typically shifts a word’s meaning in one of four directional ways: it can broaden to cover more things, narrow to cover fewer things, become more positive in attitude, or become more negative in attitude. The option that isn’t part of this common set is the idea of becoming more neutral. Neutrality isn’t described as a directional shift in how a word’s meaning changes; instead, linguists usually talk about widening, narrowing, amelioration (getting more positive), or pejoration (getting more negative). For context, you can think of broadening examples like virus, which started referring to biological pathogens and now also includes computer viruses; narrowing examples like meat, which originally meant food in general and later came to mean animal flesh specifically; and valence changes like amelioration in nice (from foolish to pleasant) or pejoration in villain (from a mere bad person to a villain). So, more neutral isn’t listed as one of the standard outcomes.