[raverbashing]

college (n.)

late 14c., "organized association of persons invested with certain powers and rights or engaged in some common duty or pursuit,"

From where expressions like "electoral college" come from

I wonder if there's a linguistic term for having a broad term become a more specific one (in some occasions like this)

Another interesting term is Faculty, which meant "branch of knowledge" then finally became "the group of teachers/professors in an educational institution" https://www.etymonline.com/word/faculty

[thaumasiotes]

> I wonder if there's a linguistic term for having a broad term become a more specific one (in some occasions like this)

Almost certainly there is, but if I ever learned it I can't bring it to mind.

This would be an example of the more general phenomenon "semantic shift", though.

Edit: a quick Google search suggests that this particular shift is known fairly intuitively as "semantic narrowing".

[grkvlt]

Interesting, in the UK (in fact, most of the world except the USA, I think) the term Faculty still means a branch of a university dealing with a particular subject group, like 'Faculty of Arts' or 'Faculty of Science' with departments arranged under the Faculties. It's always odd to me seeing e.g. the teachers at a kids school referred to as 'Faculty' on American TV shows!