The dynamism of language is birthed from time to time in the minds of native speakers, either consciously or unconsciously. Language is uniquely designed to fix meanings of words, and the essence of meanings is indispensable. As humans, we are directly conscious of meanings. The passage of meanings from the speaker to the hearer can vary, and the interpretation is dependent on the context, among other things. In view of this, it can be said that the dynamism of language reproduces semantic change, such that meanings canbe equally or differently interpreted because words mean different things to different people. In a society where meanings are not diffused equally, there is often a gap between the classical and contemporary generation. This semantic deviation contributed greatly to the poor development of communicative performance among native speakers of Yoruba. This work therefore, examines lexical items whose meanings have been extensively distributed to suit different contexts. The work is approached through Simak Bebas Libat Cakap technique and library research. This work focuses on the features of M.A.K. Haliday?s functional theory which include new discoveries, technological words and slangs. These features are compared with their Standard British forms or meanings, and the differences are established. The data of this study was randomly selected and analyzed. It was discovered that the deviation in the meanings of some Yoruba lexical items is facilitated by the need for a new meaning, vagueness of meaning, ambiguous context, among others. The findings are suggestive of the communication gap among Yoruba-English speakers. This gap is observed between the classical and contemporary generation. In view of this, more efforts should be made by linguists and writers to preserve the dynamism and uniqueness of meaning change in Yoruba language.

English

Yoruba

dynamism

language

linguistics

semantics