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Ⅰ.Introduction
Weakening of meaning, as one of the integral parts in changing words’ meanings, has accompanied the development of the human society. That the strong sense is toned down, weakened or trivialized is called weakening 代写英语论文of meaning(杨自俭，2006：246) . This phenomenon exists in every language, including Chinese and English, the two large languages which the vast majority of people speak in the world, standing for two different cultures---eastern culture and western culture. Thus, it is quite necessary to study the two languages’ word-meaning comparatively. Nouns, verbs, and adjectives first had fixable meanings and were used to describe things in strong sense. People in growing number have used such words so frequently that these words gradually lose their original meanings. Then new meanings are recognized by people today, instead of the old meanings which now people have deserted. Such kind of change in words’ meanings is the typical weakening of meaning

Ⅱ.Types of Weakening of Meaning
A. Narrowing of Meaning
Many words have become narrower compared with their former meanings and modern people prefer their restricted meanings to the widened meanings. Consequently, these kinds of words of have weakened their meanings as well. “Hospital” once referred to “a place for shelter or entertainment of travelers”. But today it merely means “place where people are treated for illness or injuries”. Nowadays, nearly everyone considers hospital as the latter meaning. Few people use the former meaning. The following dialogue can explain this.
-----You look so pale. Is there something wrong?
-----Yes, I don’t feel well and I’m going to hospital.
In it no one would regard the hospital as a shelter or entertainment of travelers, but a place for treating illness or injuries. Hospital’s original meaning had been weakened and then rooted out since it was specialized. Thus less and less people use its original meaning. Naturally its meaning has been weakened, like the word “wife”, who originally meant “woman”, now is restricted to “a married woman”(剡璇，2006：66). More examples are quoted as below:

           original meaning                narrowing meaning
garage    safe place             a building for keeping cars or other vehicles in
poison    drinking              a substance causing death or harm
shroud    clothes              a piece of fabric that dead person’s body is wrapped in before it is buried
stink       any smell                a very unpleasant smell
grocer      a wholesale dealer         a retail dealer
           In today’s magazines, books and any other readings, we can easily understand these words’ narrowing meanings instead of their original meanings. This is a long time with their first meanings losing and being tuned down gradually.

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