Way back in 2003 I had mentioned a childhood friend wondering why terrific can mean "wonderful" and also "awful." Today I thought about its dichotomous meaning again. In the sports page of the Chicago Tribune a columnist said, "In the words of sportswriter John Fennelly, the fans viewed Archie as 'a terrifically talented QB,' but also knew that 'the teams he played for were hapless to say the least.'" [Given the quarterback, it could have meant either "terribly" or "wonderfully." ]
In looking up the word terrific, I found that it comes from Latin and French roots, meaning "terrifying." That etymology seems to support the "very bad or unpleasant" definition. I wonder how the "extremely good" definition came into use. Any thoughts?
In other words, the definition just evolves over time and no one knows why?
Words change meanings all the time, but it is very seldom that anybody knows why. About all we can say is that sometimes words end up having the opposite meaning of where they started out. We can also, like goofy, notice certain trends in semantic shift. For example, [i[very[/i] went from meaning truly to extremely. Why did terrific and terrible cease to mean terrifying and come to mean something closer to very? We do not know. I'm sure more than one person has speculated, but that is true of many things. Another example of semantic shift but in the other direction is [imonster[/i], which shifted from 'warning' to 'a creature with a frightening appearance'.
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