Creole peoples were a mixture of people of European ancestry and slave populations (or free men and women of color). They were also referred to as "criollos", a word from the Spanish language meaning "created" and used in the post-French governance period to distinguish the two groups of New Orleans area and down river Creoles. Both mixed race and European Creole groups share many traditions and language, but their socio-economic roots differed in the original period of Louisiana history. Actually, the French word Creole is derived from the Portuguese word "Crioulo", which described Spaniards born in the Americas as opposed to Spain.
Lexicology current approaches. Another branch of lexicology, together with lexicography is phraseology. It studies compound meanings of two or more words, as in "raining cats and dogs". Because the whole meaning of that phrase is much different from the meaning of words included alone, phraseology examines how and why such meanings come in everyday use, and what possibly are the laws governing these word combinations. Phraseology also investigates idioms. Since lexicology studies the meaning of words and their semantic relations, it often explores the origin and history of a word, i.e. its etymology. Etymologists analyse related languages using a technique known