liigasanan

Liigasanan is a neologism used in theoretical linguistics to describe a word that develops a dominant, domain-specific meaning within a community while remaining polysemous in the language overall. It refers to a phenomenon where a base word accumulates a primary sense tied to a particular domain—such as sports, technology, or media—so that, in that domain, the sense associated with branding or practice overrides other interpretations.

The term’s etymology is not standardized. It is sometimes treated as a compound reminiscent of Finnish liiga (league) and sana (word), suggesting a “word of the league,” but its usage is cross-linguistic and not tied to a single language. Because liigasanan is a relatively new and contested label, scholars debate its boundaries with related notions like specialization, jargon, and conventionalization.

Key characteristics include a stable, dominant domain-specific sense, renewed salience through media and institutional discourse, and a relative decline of alternate senses within the domain. Outside that domain, the word may retain broader meanings or shift more slowly.

Examples are hypothetical: in sports journalism, a term that begins as a general noun may, through repeated branding, become the standard label for a league, creating a liigasanan in that context. In technology press, a gadget’s model name might function similarly, acquiring specialized meaning locally.

Reception has been mixed; supporters view liigasanan as a useful category for studying branding-driven meaning change, while critics warn against overgeneralizing across languages. See also polysemy, semantic shift, jargon.