Reading The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher, who describes how language might have evolved by looking at currently spoken languages and their relatively recent history.

Deutscher talks about the role of metaphor in the creation of language:

“…tracing a stream of metaphors that runs right through language and flows from the concrete to the abstract. In this constant surge, the simplest and sturdiest of words are swept along, one after another, and carried toward abstract meanings. As these words drift downstream, they are bleached of their original vitality and turn into pale lifeless terms for abstract concepts — the substance from which the structure of language is formed. And when at last the river sinks into the sea, these spent metaphors are deposited, layer after layer, and so the structure of language grows, as a reef of dead metaphors.”

This metaphor about metaphors beautifully captures how language evolves. The concrete becomes abstract through repeated use, losing its original vividness but gaining the ability to express increasingly complex ideas.

It makes me think about how technical language evolves as well — how terms from physical computing (like “files,” “folders,” “desktop”) become abstractions in our digital world, eventually becoming so divorced from their original meaning that we hardly notice the metaphor at all.