How can etymology aid the study of language change?

• A. It helps reconstruct historical spelling patterns.
• B. Tracing word origins clarifies shifts in meaning, form, and borrowing pathways.
• C. It explains the precise date of every word's origin.
• D. It determines the current slang usage.

Answer: (B)

Etymology lets you trace where a word comes from and how its meaning and form have evolved as it moved between languages and communities. By following a word back to its roots and along its path of borrowing, you can see how its sense broadens or shifts, how pronunciation changes over time, and how contact with other languages brings in new forms. This directly shows how language changes in practice—through semantic drift, phonological evolution, and borrowing. That makes tracing word origins to clarify shifts in meaning, form, and borrowing pathways the best fit.

Spelling histories and exact dates for every word aren’t what etymology guarantees, and current slang is driven more by contemporary usage than by inherited origins, so those angles aren’t the strongest fit here.