<body>

Entries
Hot and Cold
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 6:01 PM
'watch this space, something hot coming your way'
I saw these words on an ad in NUS, but did not have time to take a picture. However, it got me thinking, and I thought this could work as well:
'watch this space, something cool coming your way'.

So... how did two words opposite in meaning, become so similar in meaning that we could use them identical contexts?

When I google-d 'cool', the literal meaning of cool was the sixth result, whereas the it's figurative meaning referring to one's attitude or behaviour came out in the first five results. Similarly for the word 'hot', its literal meaning only appeared in the tenth result, and this is despite the fact that the primary meaning of the words are still their literal meanings. It just goes to show, that priming is important, and whether or not a meaning is a primary or secondary one is more dependent on its use rather than their positions in dictionary meanings.



About
Amelia - Future Linguist.
Currently doing up this blog for EL4216, and recording everyday language use. Hope it makes an interesting read for you! =) Note: this is a linguistic blog.

Tag! =)


Other Linguists
Amelia Teng
Danny
Daniel
Emmalyn
Heon
Hui Min
Jeannette
Jia Jie
Melissa
Rashidah
Ying Qi
Zuhara

© Layout done by materialisti-c. xoxo