"semantic shift" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to a change in the meaning of a word or phrase over time. For example, the phrase "gay" originally meant happy and carefree, but now it means homosexual. This is an example of a semantic shift.
Here is a word that has undergone semantic shift, and lawyers are muttering about it.
It was a crucial semantic shift: the "illegal" construction gave the government the imprimatur, almost the obligation, to enact more punitive policies against asylum seekers.
In what appeared to be a semantic shift in policy on nuclear missiles, he said today that the 1972 treaty "is an important, but not the only component, of strategic stability".
In fact, the transition from Renaissance to modern sports can be seen in a semantic shift; the word measure, which once connoted a sense of balance and proportion, began to refer almost exclusively to numerical measurements.
So often have a certain set of euphemistic adjectives been applied to Brown that a strange semantic shift has taken place in my mind, and whenever I see them used in wholly unrelated circumstances, I almost have to remind myself of their pre-Brown meaning.
What is implied in this metonymy, this semantic shift?
These semantic shifts are at the core of sociotechnical change today.
The final result, after much page flipping and a few more semantic shifts: At court she receives no letters but those of a compilator of corantoes, but she weens to enjoy privily a tale of werewolves' congress.
There may be a connection here with the Sinitic 米 etymon '(rice) grain', and a Tani *mi etymon with the meaning 'millet' there, noting the semantic shifts and the rhyme problem.
One could also speculate that the Sinitic 'rice' form, the Burmese Panicum form and the first syllable of the Newari Setaria form are related, with various semantic shifts and affixes.
In general, there is a lot of semantic shifting among etyma for grains: general terms for unhusked, husked and cooked grains may shift their main grain referent when the main grain crop changes, as from millet to rice among the early Sinitic groups.
