ANYTHING GOES: EXTREME POLYSEMY IN LEXICAL-SEMANTIC CHANGE

Aside from work on grammaticalization and related research, previous approaches to lexical-semantic change typically focus on taxonomies of products of change but do not consider the impetus or process for changes nor how to capture multiple semantic changed. This article undertakes case studies of dope, hot dog, and tweak, taking definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary and Urban Dictionary and then cataloging instances from the Corpus of Historical American English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English to show how variegated change can be within one language in a relatively brief time period, 1812-2012. Usage is tracked over time as well as across text type and in specific fields. Finally, this article concludes with a discussion some implications of the case studies for understanding lexical-semantic change.