Here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOK6kB9ytIo
"It’s well known that language changes over time.
But why and how do the meanings of words change?
Is there any pattern or system? Basically, meanings adapt to suit the needs of the users of a language, with some disappearing when they are not useful and others spreading quickly because they fit into new environments.The question of why is particularly complicated, but generally there can be said to be a variety of psychological and sociocultural reasons
for this kind of change, such as the need for taboo replacement and euphemism like how “to pass away” gained the figurative sense of “to die” instead of referring to any literal movement.
As well, real world changes can trigger semantic change. So for instance technological change, which can render an old word obsolete, or can require the existence of a new word for a new technology, while sometimes old words are repurposed for new concepts.
The first axis of change we can see is narrowing vs widening. Examples of narrowing, also called specialization, include: meat, which in Old English was a general word for ‘food’ before its sense narrowed to specifically the flesh of animals; deer, which originally meant any wild animal before becoming restricted to the specific species we mean today; starve, which in Old English meant ‘to die’ but now means more
narrowly ‘to die by lack of food’; and girl, which could originally refer to a child of any gender.
The opposite process, widening or generalization, broadens or extends the sense of a word, as in bird which as Old English bridd meant specifically “young bird”, with the word fugol (fowl in Modern English) being the more general word for ‘bird’, and whereas bird widened in its meaning to refer to any bird, fowl narrowed its meaning to refer specifically to barnyard birds such as chickens, ducks, and geese. A similar example is holiday, which originally mean a holy day, before its meaning extended to any time off."
I don't know what a "straight answer" is to you or what that even means. I think you mean "straightforward." But if you need big ideas and complicated processes and stages of evolution to all be simple to you or to therefore be false, then you're limiting yourself to not ever understanding most of everything.
Consider this: How would someone who is unable to understand an intellectual idea that makes sense know whether the problem is them or the idea itself? If something doesn't make sense to you, how do you know the problem isn't you? Shouldn't you consider how much academic material exists explaining it, and how many people understand it? Or are things just stupid only when you don't understand them?
