Abstract: Word functional meaning refers to new meanings resulted in the change of word category or grammatical function. From the synchronic perspective, word functional meaning is a lexico-pragmatic phenomenon caused by grammatical environment, featuring temporality, flexibility and uncertainty at the very beginning which; from the diachronic perspective, necessarily brings about multi-category words after experiencing the phases of “temporary meaning”, “ordinary meaning” and “fixed meaning”. Enlightened by adaptation theory, this paper argues that word functional meaning typically demonstrates language’s variability, negotiability and adaptability both at the level of synchronic contextual pragmatics and the level of diachronic word-category-function development.

Key words: word functional meaning, synchronic, diachronic, adaptability