The study sets out to illustrate the broad lines of the evolution of the Romance languages as reflected at the level of lexical semantics. To this end, 32 Latin verbs are examined with regard to the way their meanings changed in the early stages of the development of the Romance languages. The descriptive methods used are both single-word-oriented and superordinate in their perspective (e.g. semantic field studies). The conclusion arrived at is that Romanian and the Romance languages of the Iberian peninsula display a propensity for semantic innovation leading them to develop away from the Latin in a way that contrasts with the more conservative tendencies observable in the central Romance language areas.