As everyone knows, words constantly take on new meanings. Since these do not necessarily, nor even usually, take the place of the old ones, we should picture this process as the analogy of a tree throwing out new branches which themselves throw out subordinate branches. The new branches sometimes overshadow and kill the old one but by no means always. We shall again and again find the earliest senses of a word flourishing for centuries despite a vast overgrowth of later senses which might be expected to kill them.
When a word has several meanings historical circumstances often, make one of them dominant during a particular period. Thus "station" is now more likely to mean a railway station than anything else; "speculation" more likely to bear its financial sense than any other. Until this century "plane" had as its dominant meaning "a flat surface" or "a carpenter’s tool to make a surface smooth", but the meaning &qu
A. we were advised not to accept it
B. we were getting a new edge for a different purpose
C. we saw an example of a good word being misused
D. we saw a word serving for a different purpose
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