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ished ones often play an important role in the shades of word meaning as a result of the development of technology and society. The main types of semantic change will be discussed in the following section 1. Extension of Meaning ( Generalization) The extension of meaning refers to enlarge the range of the lexical meaning. For example, lady, the former meaning only refers to woman host, but now it denotes the entire woman, there are Saleslady, cleaning lady, lady traffic wardens, etc. Besides, it also includes verbs and adjectives. The word bullish once meant “causing or associated with a rise in prices”, but now, it extends for “optimistic” (We are very bullish about the future.) (Wang Rongpei, 1997) This kind of semantic change can occur in three ways; 1). from specific to general e.g. rubbish in the early modern English period meant rubble, but now it refers to a waste thing, any thing worthless. journal’s original meaning is daily newspaper, now it refers to any periodical. butcher meant the person who slaughters the sheep, now it means to slaughter any kind of animal. 2). from proper nouns to common nouns (many proper nouns including person-names, place-names, etc, have become common used in everyday life.) e.g. many scientist’s names have been used to be the names of physical units. such as Newton, Volt, Ohm, etc. e.g. trade mark can be used as common words. like: Xerox, Zipper, Kodak, Kleenex, etc. 3). from concrete to abstract e.g the word threat , its original meaning is troops, a group of people. then, it was shifted into an abstract meaning make threats against sb. e.g. the former meaning of the word place meant square, now, it denotes any place and has an abstract meaning of position and plight. 2. Narrowing of Meaning ( Specialization) The process refers to the narrowing of the range of lexical meaning, that is to say, the specialization. For instance, the word girl means youth before the modern English, but now it is denoting the unmarried women. The former meaning of deer is all the wild animals, but today it denotes deer only. There are three kinds of narrowing of word meaning; 1). from general to specific; e.g wife—a married woman it originally meant a woman not necessarily married. Esp. one who is old and uneducated. 2). from abstract to concrete e.g gear---a set of toothed wheels working together in a machine esp., such a set to connect a motorcar engine with the road wheels. Its original meaning was habits or manners in Middle English, and then it came to mean equipment or apparatus. 3). from common nouns to proper names e.g. Mediterranean--- the name of a place , the sea which separates Europe from Africa. Its original meaning was (of land) remote from coast or (of water area) land locked. 3. Elevation of Meaning ( Amelioration) Elevation of meaning is a type of semantic change in which a word originally denoted disapproval is given either a neutral or even a favorable meaning by its users. For example, the word minister once meant servant, but today it means person at the head of a department of the government. Words which experience a gradual elevation in their meanings were those associated with the more aristocratic things in life. This has been true particularly of words relating to social classes, such as ambassador (messager), earl (free man), knight (a servant), lady (loaf-kneader), lord (loaf giver), marshal (horse servant), and governor (steersman) Some of th