Microsoft Word alexicology doc

3. «Лекси-
кология» 
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any new shades or aspects to its meaning. This could have led to its 
rejection. Yet, large managed, to establish itself very firmly in the 
English vocabulary by semantic adjustment. It entered another syn-
onymic group with the general meaning of "big in size". At first it 
was applied to objects characterised by vast horizontal dimensions, 
thus retaining a trace of its former meaning, and now, though still 
bearing some features of that meaning, is successfully competing 
with big having approached it very closely, both in frequency and 
meaning. 
The adjective gay was borrowed from French in several meanings 
at once: "noble of birth", "bright, shining", "multi-coloured". Rather 
soon it shifted its ground developing the meaning "joyful, high-
spirited" in which sense it became a synonym of the native merry and 
in some time left it far behind in frequency and range of meaning. 
This change was again caused by the process of semantic adjustment: 
there was no place in the vocabulary for the former meanings of gay, 
but the group with the general meaning of "high spirits" obviously 
lacked certain shades which were successfully supplied by gay. 
The adjective nice was a French borrowing meaning "silly" at 
first. The English change of meaning seems to have arisen with the 
use of the word in expressions like a nice distinction, meaning first "a 
silly, hair-splitting distinction", then a precise one, ultimately an at-
tractive one. But the original necessity for change was caused once 
more by the fact that the meaning of "foolish" was not wanted in the 
vocabulary and therefore nice was obliged to look for a gap in an-
other semantic field. 
International Words 
It is often the case that a word is borrowed by several languages, 
and not just by one. Such words usually con- 
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vey concepts which are significant in the field of communication. 
Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. Most names of sci-
ences are international, e. g. philosophy, mathematics, physics, chem-
istry, biology, medicine, linguistics, lexicology. There are also nu-
merous terms of art in this group: music, theatre, drama, tragedy, 
comedy, artist, primadonna. 
It is quite natural that political terms frequently occur in the inter-
national group of borrowings: politics, policy, revolution, progress, 
democracy, communism, anti-militarism. 
20th c. scientific and technological advances brought a great 
number of new international words: atomic, antibiotic, radio, televi-
sion, sputnik. The latter is a Russian borrowing, and it became an 
international word (meaning a man-made satellite) in 1961, immedi-
ately after the first space flight by Yury Gagarin. 
The English language also contributed a considerable number of 
international words to world languages. Among them the sports terms 
occupy a prominent position: football, volley-ball, baseball, hockey, 
cricket, rugby, tennis, golf, etc. 
Fruits and foodstuffs imported from exotic countries often trans-
port their names too and, being simultaneously imported to many 
countries, become international: coffee, cocoa, chocolate, coca-cola, 
banana, mango, avocado, grapefruit. 
It is important to note that international words are mainly borrow-
ings. The outward similarity of such words as the E. son, the Germ. 
Sohn and the R. сын should not lead one to the quite false conclusion 
that they are international words. They represent the Indo-Euroреаn 
group of the native element in each respective language and are cog-
nates, i. e. words of the same etymological root, and not borrowings. 
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