historical linguistics

1. 1.

   the study of linguistic change

   “the synchrony and diachrony of language”

   Synonymsdiachronic linguisticsdiachrony

   Broaderlinguistics

   Partssound law

Questions about historical linguistics

What does historical linguistics mean?

historical linguistics means "the study of linguistic change".

What is another word for historical linguistics?

Close synonyms include diachronic linguistics, diachrony. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is historical linguistics a common word?

historical linguistics is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.