The word ‘meat’ once referred to all forms of solid food, not just animal flesh.

Polysemy is when a single word has multiple meanings––the opposite of the more familiar synonymy.

‘Weird’ derives from the Old English word wyrd, which was not an adjective, but a noun that’s often translated into Engish as ‘fate.’ But on closer inspection, wyrd and ‘fate’ are actually quite different concepts.

Over the course of seven centuries, ‘nice’ has been used to mean stupid, promiscuous, elegant, and effeminate, among a handful of other things.

From Medieval farmworkers to comic book antagonists, the meaning of ‘villain’ has changed drastically over time.