Definition of "diachronic" [diachronic]

• Of or concerned with phenomena, such as linguistic features, as they change through time. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Strawson goes on to identify two personality types, which he calls the diachronic type, the kind of person disposed to conceive of themselves connected to both their past and future selves, and the episodic type, which is the kind of person who does not tend to conceive of their momentary self as part of a chain of selves stretching into the past and future."
• "The present pope calls it 'diachronic' - a very useful term when 'relevance' is so often used to suggest that the contemporary is our only point of reference."
• "Through what they called the "diachronic" they studied the evolution of a language; and through what they called the "synchronic" they observed the systemic theory of language."