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by thaumasiotes 3030 days ago
> 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".