That's easy - until very, very recent human history, the louse/lice/nit has been a constant (and really annoying) companion of much of humanity. Not surprising

That's easy - until very, very recent human history, the louse/lice/nit has been a constant (and really annoying) companion of much of humanity. Not surprising the word stabilized in populations that used it all the time. What's interesting - is you could could probably use "semantic stability" to track preponderance of various pests, diseases, etc... in various populations/locations. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louse This would also suggest that the word might destabilize in societies/civilizations which have managed to reduce the louse impact.