Most words in contemporary French are polysemous. Their polysemy is generally studied synchronically, which allows us to assess the place each of the main meanings occupies in common usage and how that usage varies according to various factors (education, age, gender, professional background, etc.). But only the historical study of the evolving polysemy of words that have experienced a past clouded by linguistic, cognitive, and extralinguistic factors allows us to delve into the depths of their history and identify patterns of evolution. The long tradition of French lexicography provides various valuable tools for this study.

The main purpose of this study is to combine the theoretical dimension (historical lexical semantics) with the empirical dimension through the reconstruction of the evolving polysemy of a wide range of verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This book is intended for linguists and students of linguistics and Romance languages who wish to understand how the polysemy of several dozen French lexical items has emerged at the intersection of three dimensions: semasiological, onomasiological, and diachronic