View source for bleaching

==English==
{{examples|Robert Stockwell, Donka Minkova, ''English Words: History and Structure'' (2001, {{ISBN|9780521793629}}), page 157: [In] semantic bleaching, [...] the original meaning of the word has been eroded away and generalized by heavy usage, as in words like ''very'' (originally "true"), ''awful'' ("full of awe"), ''terrible'' ("able to cause terror"). The ultimate examples of bleaching are the words ''thing'', ''do'', ''nice'', {{...}} ''Thing'' originally referred to a sort of parliamentary town-hall meeting, hence ''affair'', ''act'', any kind of ''business''. {{...}} The bleaching of this word is so complete that people have come up with variations such as ''thingumbob'', ''thingamajig'', [etc].}}

===Pronunciation===
* {{IPA|en|/ˈbliːt͡ʃɪŋ/}}
* {{rhymes|en|iːtʃɪŋ|s=2}}

===Verb===
{{head|en|verb form}}

# {{infl of|en|bleach||ing-form}}

===Noun===
{{en-noun|~}}

# The process of removing [[stain]]s or of [[whitening]] [[fabric]]s, especially by the use of [[chemical]] agents.
# {{lb|en|linguistics}} The loss or removal of part of the ([[semantic]], [[grammatical]], etc) [[content]] or a word or morpheme.
#: {{cot|en|desemanticization}}
#* {{quote-book|en|year=2000|author=Frederick J. Newmeyer|title=Language Form and Language Function|publisher=MIT Press|isbn=9780262640442|page=249
|passage=Grammaticalization is often associated with &#39;semantic '''bleaching'''&#39;, and this &#39;'''bleaching'''&#39; is the result of reanalysis {{...}} But there is no evidence that the '''bleaching''' of the meaning of ''do'' played any role in the causation of this sequence of events.}}
#* {{quote-book|en|year=2009|author=Vit Bubenik; John Hewson; Sarah Rose|title=Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages: Papers presented at the workshop on Indo-European Linguistics at the XVIIIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montreal, 2007|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing|isbn=9789027289292|page=165
|passage=In the development of the prepositional phrase, which did not exist in PIE, one can see a grammaticalization based on a double '''bleaching'''. {{...}} Many of these combinations are achieved by lexical '''bleaching''' of the grammatical element and grammatical '''bleaching''' of the lexical element, as in the prepositional phrases in (11).<br>(11) French &nbsp; English<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;en auto &nbsp; by car}}

====Derived terms====
{{col-auto|en|biobleaching|nonbleaching|postbleaching|prebleaching|unbleaching|bleaching powder|bleaching agent|coral bleaching}}

{{C|en|Language}}