• What does it mean to have defecated water?
Why would somebody fight you for calling them nice?
Today, we go through 15 English words that mean something totally different today than
they used to.
15 – Awful • These days, if something is really bad,
you call it awful.
• But when the term originally surfaced, it meant something closer to "aweSOME."
• Awful things were literally Awe-ful.
As in, things that were full of awe, or more accurately, things that filled YOU with awe.
14 – Doom • The concept of doom comes from Old English,
and refers generally to a law, judgement or condemnation.
• Like, if you took something to court in the 15th century, a judge might pass down
a "dom," or "doom."
A book of laws in Old English was known as a "dombec."
• Today's definition of "doom" involves death, ruin and destruction.
That comes from its association with the Christian concept of judgement day.
13 – Guy • We use "guy" to refer to just a normal
man these days.
But it used to refer exclusively to unusual or bad people.
• The word actually originates with Guy Fawkes, the revolutionary figure who was hanged
for his role in a plot to kill King James the First of England and blow up the House
of Lords with Gunpowder.
• After the plot was discovered and thwarted, "guy" because a term for anyone who was
shifty or suspicious.
And also, we all remember, remember, the fifth of November.
12 – Villain • Villain used to be another word for "farmer."
Specifically, it was a farmhand, or some kind of peasant.
• So how did it get to be known as term for a literally evil enemy of some kind?
It all has to do with perspective.
In the era when the term "villain" was first used, peasants weren't even reading
their own names, much less writing books.
• It was knights and classy folk writing literature of that era.
They had manners and sophistication, while the "villains" were rude, dirty, and criminal-minded.
• So basically, in writings from the time, villain just referred to poor people.
But poor people were usually considered the "bad guys," so it just sort of worked
out.
11 – Sophisticate • In ancient Greece, the Sophists were accused
of making misleading statements and trying to fool people with complex arguments.
• That's the root of "sophisticate," which up until around the 20th century meant
to corrupt, delude, or make impure and not genuine.
• Today, we refer to someone as sophisticated when they seem worldly and wise, but it was
fairly recently a negative term.
10 – Passenger • Passenger means almost the exact opposite
today as it did in its original context.
• It has always referred to someone who is travelling, or "passing."
But its Latin root, passus, means to step, or walk.
• So the original definition of passenger was specifically someone who was travelling
by foot, NOT in a vehicle.
9 – Sad • Sad is a word that has been around European
languages for a long time.
Old versions of English, Dutch, German, and even Norse have some version of it.
• And in those languages, to be "sad" means to be satisfied.
As in, full of food, or satisfied from a battle.
• In other words, sad basically used to mean happy or content.
8 – Brothel • Brothels are known today as houses of
prostitution, but originally, a brothel was a person.
• Specifically, a brothel was someone who was pretty much a piece of trash.
The middle-English origin of the word is "a depraved man or woman."
This could refer to a prostitute themselves, or just a vile person in general.
• ACTUAL prostitution houses tended to have a lot of "brothel-like" people in them,
and so they started being known as "brothel-houses."
The term ended up sticking to the building better than the people that visited them.
7 – Radical • Any time we hear the word "radical,"
it's either someone referring to something extreme, or it's surfer slang for something
cool.
• Both those definitions only cropped up in the last couple centuries.
Something "radical" used to refer to something with roots, and going to the origins of something.
• Rather than meaning something extreme, it meant something basic and essential.
6 – Bully • Bullies suck.
Nobody likes a bully.
• Except that bully originally mean "sweetheart," or "brother," and was a term of endearment
for both couples and close friends.
• An alternate meaning, heard in the phrase "bully for you," uses bully as a word
meaning worthy or admirable.
While "bully" is still used this way in some dialects of British English, its origins
are actually in the U.S. around the 1860s.
5 – Defecate • For those not aware, to defecate means
to take a shit.
• Knowing that, how would you feel if you were offered a glass of defecated water?
• It's not that weird.
Defecating something used to mean to purify it and clear it of pollutants.
• Around the 1830s, people started using it in kind of the same way, but a little different.
It meant to purify the body and clear it of pollutants.
You know how.
4 – Girl • Girl used to just mean child.
Not a male or female child, just a small child.
• Its origin is disputed.
There are many similar words to "girl" in old Germanic languages, some that mean
child, and some that simply mean "short."
• By the 14th century, girl had come to mean a female child.
By the 15th century, it could mean any young, unmarried woman.
The definition expanded from there.
3 - Meat • Meat didn't always just mean "animals
that you eat."
• It used to just mean food.
Like, any solid food.
You had meat, and drink.
Some early references specifically refer to meat as animal feed.
• Not the animals themselves.
Meat used to mean food for animals, like grains, plants, or anything else.
In the 15th century, vegetables were still referred to as meat.
2 - Naughty • Naughty used to be a lot more of a literal
term than it is now.
It meant a person was actually naught-y.
As in, they had naught, or nothing.
• Naughty people were just broke and needy, simply put.
It had nothing to do with their personalities.
• Naughty picked up its more modern "disobedient" meaning in the 1630s, and it wasn't until
1869 that it was began to be used in a sexy way.
1 - Nice • The idea that nice guys finish last makes
a lot more sense in a historical context.
• The earliest meaning of "nice" was "foolish, stupid, or senseless," rooted
in Old French and Latin words that were also pretty mean-spirited.
• Nice has gone through a LOT of shifts in definition over time.
At some point, nice's definition has shifted from "stupid," to "timid," to "fussy,"
to "delicate," to "careful," to "delightful," and finally "kind" around 1830.
• The meaning of the word changed so rapidly, it's almost impossible for historians to
keep up.
Examples of the word "nice" in 16th and 17th-century text could mean almost anything
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