The goal of this assignment is to trace the history of a single word, paying clo

The goal of this assignment is to trace the history of a single word, paying close attention to how its meanings change over time. Some changes are slight; others are more dramatic. Some are related to differences in register or style; others reflect the adaptation of words to entirely new linguistic and cultural circumstances.
For this assignment you will be using the Oxford English Dictionary to explore the past meaning of a word, as well as the full range of meaning in our current day usage. ( Note that I have already selected the word the entry can be found in the attachments below). It is important you use these specifically as it is a requirement.
Start by looking up your word in the OED (provided in the attachments) as it will provide you with a trustworthy and relatively up to date discussion of the word’s etymology and meanings, and it will offer you a rich (though by no means complete) selection of historical examples of the word’s varied use (and spelling). This will provide you with the skeleton of your biography: the OED will give you many examples and allow you to trace and even explain your word’s patterns of semantic change. It may also provide meanings or quotations that look interesting or odd.
Your biography should give some account of the English word’s ancestry, its ‘parents” and ‘grandparents.’ From which language did the word come into English (if it was not already present in Old English)?
While you focus on the meanings of the word, pay attention to historical spelling variation and develop some sense of the kinds of phonological changes they might indicate. And for words that appear as more than one part of speech, try to determine which form/usage came first and watch for when the word appears to undergo a functional shift from say, noun to verb.
What did the word mean in its earliest appearance, and how and when did the other meanings appear? Your job as ‘biographer’ is to try to describe and justify these new meanings. What sort of logical explanation can you come up with? Was the meaning transferred from one situation to another and so have to be adjusted? Was the literal meaning of the word given a metaphoric interpretation, which resulted in yet a further change occurring when the metaphorical sense of the word took over from the original literal sense?
You will need to describe and make sense of the historical sequence of meanings. To do so, you’ll probably have to speculate about how these semantic changes may have occurred. Merely regurgitating in chronological form the information from the OED won’t get us far enough.
Read about the etymology of the word and use the dated quotations to trace changes in meaning. Your biography should focus on the chronological developments of the word, and try to explain how the recorded usages of the word evolved. This will require you to pay attention to the dates of citations and to the word’s changes in nuance or even in more basic meaning.
When you are writing your biography, it may be useful to think in terms of the denotation of the word as opposed to its connotation(s).
denotation: The most specific or direct meaning of a word
connotation: The set of associative implications constituting the general sense of a word in addition to its literal sense.
Trace this word’s history and range of uses as best you can. Then, complete a 500 word biography on the word.
Explore questions like the following:
• Where did this word/phrase come from?
• Who uses it?
• How has its meaning evolved over time?
• What can the word tell us about the connection between language and culture?
For clarity’s sake, when you refer to words as words, put them in italics; if you are citing the word’s meaning, put it in ‘single quotation marks’; put quotations and examples in “double quotation marks.” For example:
The word science frequently means ‘wisdom,’ as in the lines about the Trinity from Piers Plowman: “Right so is the Sone the science of the Fader/ And ful God as is the Fader, no febler ne no better” (B 17.172, ed. Schmidt).
Come up with a creative title for the work.