XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.language.latin   
   From: ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de   
      
   Ed Cryer  wrote or quoted:   
   >Is there a technical term for this way that words mutate in meaning?   
      
     In linguistics, when a word goes south and starts to bum people   
     out over time, that's called pejoration or semantic degradation.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)