Six Words That Changed Their Meaning
Words drift quietly. Six English words show the four directions that drift takes — and why a dictionary is a record of usage rather than a rulebook.
5 min readPublished November 1, 2026
Nice: from foolish to pleasant
From Latin nescius, 'ignorant', through Old French. In Middle English it meant foolish or simple; by the eighteenth century it meant precise or careful; by the nineteenth, agreeable. Three separate shifts, each sensible to the speakers who made it.
Awful and awesome: the same root, opposite directions
Both come from 'awe'. 'Awful' originally meant inspiring awe, then dreadful. 'Awesome' kept the positive sense but weakened into 'very good'. The pair is a clean demonstration of pejoration and amelioration running in parallel from one origin.
Villain, meat, bird, silly
'Villain' moved from farm labourer to wrongdoer (pejoration). 'Meat' narrowed from any food to animal flesh. 'Bird' widened from a nestling to the whole class. 'Silly' travelled from blessed, to innocent, to foolish. Four words, four different mechanisms, one conclusion: meaning is a negotiated settlement that keeps being renegotiated.
Sources
References point to third-party sources. Esurranty summarises them in its own words; check the original for the full argument.