It’s kind of funny, isn’t it. When we say the word awe, we know that it means “an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime.“
And yet, what do we think when we saw awful? Or awesome? We can see at a glance that both words are from that root–and indeed, both once meant the same thing.
Yet in modern vernacular, both of these words have drifted from their root word…and they’ve drifted in opposite directions. It’s fascinating to look at how and when and why. And to realize that awe, in its own definition, carries the potential for both positive and negative feelings, right? Dread is bad. Wonder is good.
Awful, at the start, could be either. It was simply “full of awe.” And it wasn’t until 1809 that it laid claim to all the negative parts of awe and came to used strictly for “exceedingly bad.”
Awesome actually came on the scene nearly 300 years later, and first was mostly positive, focused on “profoundly reverential” since the 1590s. In the next hundred years that dread worked its way back in. And it wasn’t until 1960 that it veered from all things reverential and simply began to mean “impressive, very good.”
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.
It is so interesting to learn about some word histories or etymologies. ‘Nice’ used to mean simple or foolish-to some it may still mean the same thing. Word meanings seem hard to pin down. This post reminds me of contranyms or Janus words. I’m kind of a word nerd dabbler. I’m glad I found your post.