The Comparison of the Definition of /khâaw/ in Thai Dictionary

Abstract

Thai language has changed all the time, both spoken and written language, the present writing language will adhere to the correct writing principles according to the Royal Institute's dictionary, so the dictionary is considered an important principle used in writing today's books. This research article is for study the change of definition of group of the word /khâaw/ from 6 Thai dictionaries. The concept of this study is the semantics change of word by Thanyarat Panakul (1992).The study indicates that the word /khâaw/ in Thai dictionary has 3 kind of meanings which are widening, narrowing, and stay the same but spell different. Study found that there are 60 words that have the same meaning but spell different, 6 words that have widening meaning, and only 1 word that has narrowing meaning. In addition, /khâaw/ used to has 2 meaning before written as “เข้า” and then became only one meaning.